“The economic costs of alcohol abuse are estimated to have been $184.6 billion in 1998”
This cost is going up due to mindless Gang Drinking where no intelligent conversation is allowed. Millions of Americans in their twenties have no communication skills. The world economy collapses, and the children of wealth take to the streets to throw beer bottles at the police while making wild animal sounds. Are Republican parents going to pay for this beer bash gone hog wild? No, because most of them are religious addicts glued to the T.V.s uttering mumb-jumbo about the sky falling.
The holy hateful party of Jesus has gone out of its way NOT to help our President restore OUR economy. They hope and pray he will fail. Instead of talking about the economy, they talk about southern fried heart attack food.
Jon
There has never been a documented case of a person dying from merely ingesting LSD, there have been, however, cases where people have caused harm to themselves because LSD lowers your awareness of common dangers. It should be noted that you can ingest enough LSD to cause you physical harm. However, you would to have to ingest such a large amount that it is considered non-toxic. Ibuprofen is considered more hazardous to your health.
A Snapshot of Annual High-Risk College Drinking Consequences
The consequences of excessive and underage drinking affect virtually all college campuses, college communities, and college students, whether they choose to drink or not.
Death: 1,825 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including motor vehicle crashes (Hingson et al., 2009).
Injury: 599,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are unintentionally injured under the influence of alcohol (Hingson et al., 2009).
Assault: 696,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are assaulted by another student who has been drinking (Hingson et al., 2009).
Sexual Abuse: 97,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape (Hingson et al., 2009).
Unsafe Sex: 400,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 had unprotected sex and more than 100,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 report having been too intoxicated to know if they consented to having sex (Hingson et al., 2002).
Academic Problems: About 25 percent of college students report academic consequences of their drinking including missing class, falling behind, doing poorly on exams or papers, and receiving lower grades overall (Engs et al., 1996; Presley et al., 1996a, 1996b; Wechsler et al., 2002).
Health Problems/Suicide Attempts: More than 150,000 students develop an alcohol-related health problem (Hingson et al., 2002), and between 1.2 and 1.5 percent of students indicate that they tried to commit suicide within the past year due to drinking or drug use (Presley et al., 1998).
Drunk Driving: 3,360,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 drive under the influence of alcohol (Hingson et al., 2009).
Vandalism: About 11 percent of college student drinkers report that they have damaged property while under the influence of alcohol (Wechsler et al., 2002).
Property Damage: More than 25 percent of administrators from schools with relatively low drinking levels and over 50 percent from schools with high drinking levels say their campuses have a “moderate” or “major” problem with alcohol-related property damage (Wechsler et al., 1995).
Police Involvement: About 5 percent of 4-year college students are involved with the police or campus security as a result of their drinking (Wechsler et al., 2002), and 110,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 are arrested for an alcohol-related violation such as public drunkenness or driving under the influence (Hingson et al., 2002).
Alcohol Abuse and Dependence: 31 percent of college students met criteria for a diagnosis of alcohol abuse and 6 percent for a diagnosis of alcohol dependence in the past 12 months, according to questionnaire-based self-reports about their drinking (Knight et al., 2002).
The economic costs of alcohol abuse are estimated to have been $184.6 billion in 1998
This report presents updated/projected estimates of the economic costs of alcohol abuse using the same general approach that has been employed for this purpose in prior efforts (e.g., Harwood et al., 1998; Rice et al., 1990). This update strategy is necessary to maintain reasonably up-to-date cost estimates because of the effects of various trends in our society and the economy, which, while relatively gradual over a year or two, may have a material impact over several years.
Changes in actual costs of alcohol abuse between the year for which detailed estimates were developed and more recent years for which estimates are desired may be decomposed into two categories: changes in the frequency and intensity of the underlying behavioral outcomes and changes in the monetary valuation of these outcomes. This report measures changes in these components using the following indicators:
•Population;
•Incidence/prevalence of selected alcohol-related consequences;
•Prices for health care services;
•Worker compensation (wage rates); and
•General prices.
The first two factors address changes in the “real” consequences of alcohol abuse. Specifically, as total population increases, one might expect the burden of alcohol abuse to rise proportionally. However, this conclusion relies on the assumption that the incidence and prevalence rates of the various adverse consequences of alcohol abuse remain more or less constant. While there is highly detailed information about population change in the United States, there is much less current data about the incidence and prevalence of alcohol abuse and its consequences.
Other important changes over time affect the “value” of the impacts. These changes are usually summarized by changes in the prices of goods and services – including the value of labor in the economy. There are extensive data available about price trends in the U.S. economy. Cost of illness studies (including Harwood et al., 1998) usually distinguish between the value of goods and services consumed and the value of labor productivity forgone as a result of the illness. Changes in the former are generally represented with factors such as the Consumer Price Index (or the Medical Price Index), while the latter are represented with measures of the cost of labor services – wage and salary indices.
The simplest approach to updating or adjusting cost estimates is to adjust the original total cost estimate for population change (which grew by about 1 percent annually between 1992 and 1998) and the general change in prices (consumer prices increased by an average of about 2.5 percent annually between 1992 and 1998). This approach is readily applied, and the data are readily available and easily explained and understood. Application of these two factors results in an overall increase of 23 percent, between 1992 and 1998. Although this is fairly close to the 25 percent change actually estimated in this report, there are disadvantages to such a limited approach. There may be factors that lead various cost components to change at different rates across time, relating to both real changes in behavioral outcomes and changes in subcomponent prices.
At the opposite extreme it is possible to return to the original calculation spreadsheets (which involve hundreds or perhaps thousands of cells). It is possible to adjust selected components representing either the real outcomes (base population, incidence or prevalence, and/or severity of impacts) or the prices used in valuation, without refreshing all of the data.
A middle level of complexity has been taken in developing the updated estimates for this report. Specifically, the original cost estimates have been grouped into 22 major components. The estimated costs associated with each of these components have been updated by applying adjustment factors to reflect changes in both the real consequences of alcohol abuse and the value assigned to the consequences.
Most cost components have been updated by applying one or more adjustment factors to account for changes in the real consequences of alcohol abuse, and another one or more adjustment factors to account for changes in the value of those consequences. In the simplest cases (such as the category Lost Productivity Due to Alcohol-Related Illness), this amounts to multiplying the 1992 estimate for a particular cost component by the ratio of the 1998 population to the 1992 population and then again by the ratio of the relevant price or wage index value for 1998 to the corresponding value for 1992. For some other cost components (such as Property Damage Due to Motor Vehicle Crashes), the real consequences have been updated using factors that are more specific to the particular outcome under consideration than simply overall population growth.
For a few cost components, updating has been accomplished using only a single factor to adjust for both the real and price components of change. For example, health care costs for treating the medical consequences of alcohol consumption have been updated based on the growth in National Health Expenditures from 1992 through 1998 as reported by the Health Care Financing Administration.
The cost components and adjustment factors used in this report are summarized in Table 2. The cost components are defined and described in Harwood et al. (1998
Rosamond Press 
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