Many people often wonder how drugs effect the community. Here are just a few of the ways:

* Drug-related crime disrupts neighborhoods with violence between dealers, threats to residents and the crime of the addicts themselves

* Teens between 12 and 17 that use alcohol and/or drugs have much higher rates of violent behavior

* Many (around 50%) of the homeless have a drug or alcohol problem

* 513,000 people are injured in alcohol-related crashes every year

* In 2000, $161 billion:

–$110 billion in lost productivity

–$12.9 billion in healthcare costs

–$35 billion in other costs, such as agencies that work to stop drug use

* Drugs spread infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C

* Drug use affects the unborn by causing birth defects and health problems

* Children of drug users are often neglected or abused

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 1:37 pm by marie and is filed under Addiction and Recovery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.