Beschreibung:
Each year, around 1.2 million people in the European Union (EU) undergo treatment for problems related to drug abuse. There are associated requirements for policymakers and planners to determine the capacity and performance of national treatment systems and evaluate their costs. Responses are required to central policy questions such as ‘What treatments are offered?’, ‘Are they effective?’ and ‘How much does treatment cost?’. However, despite the collection of data on treatment activity being relatively well established in Europe, there has been limited focus on the costs of, and expenditure on, drug treatment. Limited data and/or insufficient insight into the financing of drug treatment will inevitably hinder the efficient allocation of resources. This European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) Insights report gathers together studies from a wide range of experts, providing a unique overview of the methodologies currently used for estimating drug treatment expenditure. In the absence of a systematic discussion of these issues, there has been little opportunity for policymakers, practitioners and researchers to take advantage of existing knowledge and experience. With the goal of taking the first step towards closing this gap, this report brings together a set of diverse studies encompassing much of the recent work on drug treatment expenditure in different parts of the world. It therefore reflects the current state of the art in this field and, by focusing on methods, it will facilitate analysis of the main methodological commonalities and considerations arising from these estimates.