"The National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) prepares an annual National Drug Threat Assessment (NDTA) that provides federal policymakers and senior officials with a comprehensive appraisal of the danger that trafficking and use of illicit drugs pose to the security of our nation. To expand the scope of its NDTA, and to provide the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and other federal officials with a broad and deep understanding of the full burden that illicit drug use places on our country, NDIC has prepared this assessment-- The Economic Impact of Illicit Drug Use on American Society. The assessment is conducted within a Cost of Illness (COI) framework that has guided work of this kind for several decades. As such, it monetizes the consequences of illicit drug use, thereby allowing its impact to be gauged relative to other social problems. In 2007, the cost of illicit drug use totaled more than $193 billion. Direct and indirect costs attributable to illicit drug use are estimated in three principal areas: crime, health, and productivity. Each of these areas has several components, which appear as rows in the Statistical Summary table presented on the following page. Because it is possible to characterize productivity lost to drug-induced incarceration and drug-induced homicide as either crime or productivity costs, a 'scenario' is provided for each method of accounting― and these scenarios appear as columns (a) and (b) of the Statistical Summary table."