The present report, part of a larger Family Funding Study project, is the fifth and last in the series that examines the cost of drug and alcohol abuse to West Virginia’s criminal justice, healthcare, education, welfare, and workforce systems. A comprehensive report, incorporating estimates from all these sectors, will be produced at the end of this project.
The present report attempts to capture the impact of drug and alcohol abuse on West Virginia’s workforce system. Although drug and alcohol abuse seriously impact the workforce system in terms of productivity, efficiency, and other factors, data illuminating those costs have yet to be systematically collected.
The present report, therefore, limits its scope to the cost of worker absenteeism related to drug and alcohol abuse. Worker absenteeism is defined as the extra days substance using workers are absent compared to non-users (Foster & Vaughan, 2005).
This report estimates that drug and alcohol abuse-related worker absenteeism costs the state over $12 million a year.
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