Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the annual cost to the NHS of drug addiction; and if his Department will publish an estimate of those annual costs in each financial year since 2010-11.

The costs of drug addiction are difficult to estimate due to the range of impacts. The latest estimates by the Home Office, in the 2017 Drug Strategy, suggest that in the United Kingdom society bears an estimated £10.7 billion of drug-related costs in terms of crime, healthcare and law enforcement. There are no plans to publish estimates of the annual costs to the National Health Service of drug addiction.