Substance Use: Individual Behavior, Social Interaction, Markets and Politics(16 Advances in Health Economics and Health Services Research)

The economics of substance use and abuse deals with the consumption of goods that share two properties. First, they are addictive in the sense that an increase in past consumption of the good leads to an increase in current consumption. Second, their consumption harms the consumer and others. This second property makes them of interest from policy, legal, and public health perspectives. The tremendous expansion in research in the economics of substance use and abuse since the early 1980s and the presence of many unresolved issues motivate this volume. While most of the papers are by economists, the disciplines of medicine, political science, and psychology are also represented. Any successful attempt to address substance use must adopt an interdisciplinary perspective. The aim of the volume to cover issues pertaining to individual behavior, social interactions, markets, and politics makes this all the more necessary. Some of the twenty papers in the volume contain new estimates of the price sensitivity of alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, cocaine, and heroin. Others focus on the effects of consumption on earnings, crime, suicide, and sexually transmitted diseases. Still others address the roles of psychobiology, social interaction, hyperbolic discounting, and peer effects in shaping decisions with regard to the use of harmfully addictive substances. To a larger or lesser extent, all the papers contain implications for policy-making. A number of papers, however, are more directly concerned with policy-making and with the policy-making environment, including evaluations of the costs and benefits of treatment services for abusers. Readers of this volume should gain a much better understanding of what we know and what we still need to know about the economics of substance use and abuse.

Table of Contents:
Individual behaviour. The psychobiology of aggressive behaviour (L. Traskman-Bendz, S. Westling). Individual behaviors and substance use: the role of price (M. Grossman). Demand for illicit drugs among pregnant women (H. Corman, et al.). The effect of alcohol consumption on the earnings of older workers (H. Saffer, D. Dave). Drugs and juvenile crime: evidence from a panel of siblings and twins (H.N. Mocan, E. Tekin). Antidepressants and the suicide rate: is there a connection? (M. Dahlberg, D. Lundin). Social interactions. Choice, social interaction, and addiction: the social roots of addictive preferences (O.J. Skog). The spread of drug use: epidemic models or social interaction? (H.O. Melberg). Structural estimation of peer effects in youth smoking (B. Krauth). Markets. Trends in wine consumption in Norway - is diffusion theory applicable? (I. Rossow). An investigation of the effects of alcohol policies on youth STDs (M. Grossman, R. Kaestner, S. Markowitz). Can we model the impact of increased drug treatment expenditure on the UK drug market? (C. Godfrey, et al.). Tobacco control policies and youth smoking: evidence from a new era (J. Tauras, S. Markowitz, J. Cawley). The fires aren't out yet: higher taxes and young adult smoking (P. DeCicca, D. Kenkel, A. Mathios). Coupons and advertising in markets for addictive goods: do cigarette manufacturers react to known future tax increases? (D. Lillard, A. Sfekas). Politics. Symbolism and rationality in the politics of psychoactive substances (Robin Room). What does it mean to decriminalize marijuana? A cross-national empirical examination (R. Liccardo Pacula, et al.). Economic perspectives on injecting drug use (D. E Bloom, A. Mahal, B. O'Flaherty). Models pertaining to how drug policy should vary over the course of a drug epidemic (J. P. Caulkins). Economic evaluation of relapse prevention for substance users: treatment settings with healthcare policy (T. Yamada, C.-C. Chen, T.Yamada).