Substance abuse costs government and businesses huge amounts of money yearly. According to statistics, alcohol and drug abuse costs the USA $249 and $271.5 billion respectively, every year. Businesses lose $81 billion annually to drug abuse which is approximately 10% of annual payroll.
According to studies done by https://www.ukat.co.uk/ and represented by this infographic:
– Substance abuse is known to cause 40% of industrial accidents and 60% of all poor job performances.
– 83% of employees who have been hungover at work admit that it makes a difference in the way they work; 33% of employees admit to having been to work with a hangover and 22% admit to having made mistakes at the workplace as a result of being hungover.
– As overall substance abuse keeps rising, drug-testing programmes and addiction treatment centres continue to play a significant role in creating safe and drug-free work arenas.
– Studies show that workplace drinkers include more men than women, more managers than underlings, younger rather than older, and single rather than married.
– 80% of studies show that alcohol-related work issues come from social drinkers and not frequent alcohol drinkers.
– Men with jobs which can be classified as “blue-collar” are 3.5 times more likely to die from an alcohol-related disease than men who are managers.
– Women with “routine jobs” like cleaning and sewing are 5.7 times more likely to die than those with white-collar jobs from an alcohol-related disease.
– Facts show that 70% of substance abusers are in full-time employment, 15% of workers are drunk at work at least occasionally, 9 out of 10 drug abusers work at small or medium scale companies and 75% of illicit drug users are currently unemployed which is about 17% of the U.S workforce.
– According to tests conducted on the general U.S workforce, there was a 43% increase in positivity in urine drug test from 2004 – 2016. There was a 56.7% increase in positivity in oral fluid test and 41.9% increase in positivity in hair drug test from 2013 – 2016.
– In organisations without a drug-testing programme, 30 – 40% of employees self-reported past month use.
– Fields with the most problem drinkers include construction and mining, wholesale, retail, leisure and hospitality, and installation/maintenance and repair.
– Fields with the highest rate of drug abuse include food preparation and serving, construction, arts, design, entertainment, sports and media, sales, and installation/maintenance and repair.
