The costs of harmful alcohol and other drug use imposed a substantial cost on New Zealand in 2005/06.  This report, commissioned by the New Zealand Ministry of Health and the Accident Compensation Corporation, estimated these costs to total $6.9 billion.

This is approximately equivalent to the GDP of New Zealand’s agricultural industry.

Harms related to alcohol and other drug use include a wide range of crime, lost output, health service use and other diverted resources.

The $6.9 billion total was made up of $4.9 billion of tangible resource costs and a further $2.0 billion of intangible welfare costs.  Of this total, harmful alcohol use cost New Zealand an estimated $4.8 billion of diverted resources and lost welfare.  Harmful other drug use was estimated to cost $1.4 billion.  A further $0.7 billion of costs were attributable to the combined harmful use of alcohol and other drugs that could not be separately allocated to one category.

The full report is available here.