The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that fatal opioid overdoses and opioid use disorder cost the United States approximately $1.02 trillion in 2017.

The estimate included healthcare, opioid-use-disorder treatment, criminal justice, lost productivity, reduced quality of life and the value associated with lives lost.

CDC reports approximately $31.3 billion in healthcare costs and $3.5 billion in opioid-use-disorder treatment costs within that estimate.

Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Economics of Injury and Violence Prevention.

Canadian research estimated that substance use cost the Canadian economy $49.1 billion in 2020.

The reported categories included:

The important limitation is that these figures cover substance use overall, not exclusively illegal drugs or organized narco activity.

Source: Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, Canadian Substance Use Costs and Harms.

The European Union Drugs Agency estimates a minimum of 7,589 drug-induced deaths in the European Union during 2024.

The EUDA emphasizes that the figure is a minimum estimate and that reporting methods differ between countries.

When Norway and Türkiye are included, the estimate rises to more than 8,300 deaths.

Source: European Union Drugs Agency, European Drug Report 2026.

Drug markets require investigations, surveillance, arrests, evidence processing, specialized units and continuing enforcement.

A transition that genuinely reduced illegal-market activity could potentially allow some resources to be redirected toward other public-safety priorities.

Drug-related prosecutions consume resources across police, prosecutors, defence services, courts, evidence handling and administration.

Any potential savings would depend on how laws, enforcement priorities and criminal activity actually changed.

Prisons and correctional systems incur costs for incarceration, healthcare, staffing, rehabilitation and administration.

Reduced criminal-market involvement could potentially reduce some of these expenditures.

Governments devote substantial resources to detecting and intercepting illicit trafficking.

A successful reduction in illegal trafficking could potentially change the demands placed on border agencies.

Transnational drug markets can involve organized criminal networks, creating continuing investigative and enforcement demands.

The policy question for this project is whether changing economic incentives could reduce some of that demand.

Legal businesses operate inside the tax system. A legitimate economic structure could therefore create taxable transactions, payroll and business activity.

The actual tax effect would depend on the specific regulatory model, tax rates and consumer behaviour.

Criminal markets require methods to conceal and move illicit proceeds.

Bringing economic activity into transparent systems could potentially make some financial flows easier to monitor.

Highly profitable illegal markets can create incentives for corruption and institutional interference.

Changing the profitability of the illegal market could potentially change those incentives.

A legal economic model could potentially create lawful employment opportunities for people who currently participate in criminal economies.

The concept proposed for the film is that legitimate capital can be directed toward businesses, construction, infrastructure and productive investment rather than remaining inside an underground economy.

Overdose, poisoning, trauma and other acute drug-related events can require emergency medical intervention.

Reducing severe drug-related harm could potentially reduce some emergency-care demand.

Serious complications can require hospital treatment, intensive care and extended recovery.

The financial burden extends beyond the initial event when complications require continuing care.

Addiction treatment can involve physicians, medication, counselling, residential programs, outpatient care and long-term recovery services.

The objective should not be to remove treatment. The objective is to reduce preventable harm while maintaining access to treatment for people who need it.

Some forms of drug use, particularly injection drug use, can increase risks associated with infectious diseases.

Those infections can create additional healthcare costs extending well beyond the original drug use.

The medical consequences of substance use can include long-term physical health problems, mental-health treatment, rehabilitation and disability.

The real economic question is therefore not simply “What does an overdose cost?” It is also:

Fatal overdose and other drug-related deaths represent years of life that cannot be recovered.

Economic studies sometimes place a monetary value on lost life, but that accounting should never obscure the human loss behind the statistic.

Substance-related illness, disability and premature death can reduce participation in the workforce.

Canadian research estimated $22.4 billion in lost productivity associated with substance use in 2020.

Addiction, incarceration, premature death, financial instability and untreated illness can affect spouses, parents and children.

The financial statistics cannot fully measure these consequences.

Any economic savings achieved through policy change should be evaluated partly by asking whether resources can be redirected toward prevention, treatment, recovery and community development.

This is the central DWWORKSHOP hypothesis:

This is a hypothesis for investigation, not a claim that the sequence is guaranteed to occur.

The movie can explore the question:

What happens when a government tries to change the economics underneath a criminal market instead of relying exclusively on enforcement against the people participating in it?

Which costs would realistically decrease? Which costs would remain? Which new regulatory costs would appear?

Identify the taxpayer, healthcare system, employer, family and individual costs separately.

Examine government, legitimate businesses, workers, families, healthcare systems and communities separately.

A serious screenplay should examine unintended consequences as well as intended benefits.

Possible issues include continued illegal markets, addiction, youth access, commercialization, regulatory costs and displacement of criminal activity.

Every major claim in the movie should be separated into:

Economic estimates concerning opioid use disorder, fatal opioid overdose, healthcare, treatment, criminal justice and productivity.

Canadian Substance Use Costs and Harms research, including healthcare, productivity, criminal justice and other direct costs.

European drug mortality, overdose, treatment, infectious-disease and drug-market research.

International research concerning drug markets, organized crime, trafficking, corruption and criminal-economy impacts.