Print | Need Larger Text? | Share

International Guidelines for the Estimation of the Avoidable Costs of Substance Abuse

4 Special considerations in developing countries

Chapter 5 of the aggregate cost Guidelines devotes substantial attention to data requirements in developing countries and to special considerations of cost estimation in these countries. The comments in that chapter apply equally to the estimation of avoidable costs, although the development by the WHO of the epidemiological information presented in Ezzati et al has ameliorated the data problems of developing countries in a very important respect. One major obstacle to the estimation of the social costs of drug-attributable mortality and morbidity in developing countries has been largely removed.

A major area of cost estimation which still remains largely unresolved relates to the social costs of drug-attributable crime. Although tobacco-related smuggling and tax evasion are major problems in many countries, the major crime related issues which researchers have attempted to address relate to alcohol and, particularly, to illicit drugs. This is an issue which the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD) has been addressing and Appendix H summarises a presentation which Dr Augusto Pérez-Gómez, Lead Researcher at CICAD, made to the 2005 Ottawa workshop on issues regarding the estimation of the avoidable costs of drug-attributable crime.