Millions of Americans Hurt By Others’ Drinking, Drug Use Study Finds

Dr. Erika Rosen, lead author on this study, is an Associate Scientist with PHI’s Alcohol Research Group (ARG). Rosen conducted this research and authored this journal article as a postdoctoral fellow with ARG.  

PISCATAWAY, NJ – The risks of alcohol and other drug consumption to the user are well known, but many Americans—nearly 160 million—say they’ve been harmed by someone else’s substance use, according to a new study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

In a national survey of U.S. adults, researchers found that 34% said they’d ever suffered “secondhand harm” from someone else’s alcohol use—ranging from marriage and family problems to financial fall-out to being assaulted or injured in a drunk-driving accident. Meanwhile, 14% said they’d been harmed by someone else’s use of marijuana, opioids or other drugs.

In sheer numbers, that amounts to 113 million Americans who’ve suffered consequences from another person’s drinking, and 46 million who’ve been hurt by others’ drug use. What’s more, there was plenty of “overlap” between those two groups: Of survey respondents reporting secondhand harms from alcohol, 30% said they’d also been impacted by other people’s drug use.

It makes sense that risky drinking and drug use have far-reaching consequences, but it’s only in recent years that research has delved into the secondhand harms of alcohol, Kerr said. And little has been known about the secondhand effects of drug use.

The new findings are based on responses from 7,800 U.S. adults who were surveyed between September 2019 and April 2020—before, Kerr noted, the effects of the pandemic on Americans’ substance use.

The survey asked people if they’d ever experienced a set of specific harms due to someone else’s alcohol or drug use: physical harm, vandalized property, family problems, financial difficulties or involvement in a traffic accident. Far fewer people said they’d been harmed by others’ drug use compared with alcohol use—which is likely because both drinking and alcohol use disorders are much more common than drug use and drug use disorders, Kerr said.

But, he added, there could also be additional reasons, including the limits of the survey (which asked about secondhand harms from drug use with a single question). The researchers are now conducting a new survey with more detailed questions on harms related to individual drugs.

In the meantime, the current findings highlight a major public health issue: For every person with a substance use disorder, Kerr said, many more may be harmed in some way, to some degree. That, he added, underscores the need to improve people’s access to substance abuse treatment, and the importance of harm reduction efforts—such as preventing people from driving under the influence.

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Rosen, E. M., Kerr, W. C., Patterson, D., Greenfield, T. K., Ramos, S., & Karriker-Jaffe, K. J. (2024). Prevalence and correlates of alcohol and drug harms to others: Findings from the 2020 U.S. National Alcohol Survey. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 85(6), 794–803.

To arrange an interview with the study’s lead author Erika Rosen, please contact Diane Schmidt at dschmidt@arg.org.

The Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs considers this press release to be in the public domain. Editors may publish this press release in print or electronic form without legal restriction. Please include a byline and citation. The journal is published by the Center of Alcohol and Substance Use Studies at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

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About the Alcohol Research Group

For sixty years, the Alcohol Research Group (ARG) has been actively engaged in critically needed alcohol- and other drug-related public health research. We study drinking and other drug use and how these and other factors such as gender, race/ethnicity, sexual identity, socioeconomic disparities, and environmental differences affect health. ARG is also home to the NIAAA-funded National Alcohol Research Center and training program. Please visit www.arg.org.

ARG is a program of the Public Health Institute, an independent nonprofit organization, dedicated to promoting health, well-being and quality of life for people throughout California, across the nation and around the world. Please visit www.phi.org.