Venue: The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, 1 Towerview Drive, Durham, NC 27708-0120
Presentation
An Examination of the Treatment Cost for Marijuana Abuse and Dependence in the United States
There is a common belief that the health consequences of marijuana use are relatively minor. This belief is generated by modest medical and epidemiological literature showing relatively small associations between marijuana use and particular health outcomes or harms in the general using population. And, although marijuana dependence and abuse are known to exist, very little attention is given to the cost of treating these problems because people generally believe that marijuana abuse does not generate a true dependence syndrome and marijuana abuse or dependence alone is rare, as consumption generally occurs with alcohol or some other substance.
In this paper, we provide a careful examination of the characteristics of marijuana abuse and dependence episodes taking place in general short stay hospitals and the specialty sector in the United States. We examine the cost of treating these patients as well as compare the characteristics of these patients to those with a primary diagnosis of alcohol, cocaine and heroin to see how these populations differ. In addition, we attempt to tease out the extent to which cases in particular settings represent referrals from the criminal justice system so we can obtain a lower bound estimate of the cost of treating marijuana dependence/abuse.
We find a surprising number of patients getting treated in hospital settings with marijuana as a primary diagnosis. Furthermore, the average length of stay for these patients is nearly three times that of individuals with other substance-related primary diagnoses, resulting in an average cost per episode that far exceeds that for other drug dependent individuals. In addition we find that the criminal justice system is not the primary cause of these hospital admissions. We also find a substantial number of people in the specialty sector receiving treatment for just marijuana dependence (with no other substance of abuse), half of which were not generated by the criminal justice system. The findings contradict presumptions that marijuana dependence is a rare event and attributable to either other substance abuse and/or criminal justice referrals.