The methodology employed to estimate the economic costs of drug abuse in the United States were adopted from guidelines developed by the U.S. Public Health Service for cost of illness studies. Consequently, the estimates presented in this analysis can be compared to the costs of cancer, stroke, and heart disease among other illnesses. Estimates are offered for the economic value of many of the consequences of drug abuse, such as health problems and health care utilization. The report thus divides the estimates of the costs of drug abuse into health care, productivity losses, crime costs, and other effects. Following the introduction in section 1, section 2 reviews the research literature and describes the analytic methods used in the calculation of drug abuse costs. Section 3 presents the data and estimation methods to derive each cost of illness estimate. Section 4 offers cost estimates from 1992 through 2002 for the major cost categories of health, productivity, other impacts, crime-related costs, and direct and indirect costs. Section 5 presents further comparisons and analyses, including comparisons of the economic cost of drug abuse with cost estimates from other health problems in the United States and other nations. Cost trends from 1992 through 2002 are estimated, which indicate that the costs of drug abuse increased an average of 5.3 percent each year from 1992 through 2002. Overall, the economic cost of drug abuse in our Nation during 2002 was estimated at $180.9 billion. Footnotes, tables, figures, references, appendixes