Booze & Drugs and Benefits!

Recently several UK newspapers printed stories about the fact that around 49,000 "alcoholics" and 48,000 "addicts" are claiming incapacity benefits because of their respective conditions.

Not suprisingly there were 2 main lines :-

1. This is an abuse of the benefits system.
2. Are people being denied treatment and condemned to a life on benefits?

My first question would be "where are the others?"

Taking the drug users first:

According to the Home Office and the National Treatment Agency there were 181,390 people in contact with drug treatment services in England alone in 2005/6.

Taking the rest of the UK into account, as well as research that has suggested that perhaps 2/3 of problematic drug users are not in contact with services it would not be unrealistic to suggest that there could be 4 to 500,000 problem drug users in total in the UK. If 48,000 are receiving disability benefits what are the rest doing? Are they committing crime? In prison? Working? Claiming Jobseekers Allowance? Does anyone know?

Similarly it has been estimated that there are up to 3,000,000 people in the UK suffering from alcohol dependency. 75% of those have been estimated to be working - driving buses, airline pilots, surgeons - all sorts of things that include many different kinds of high risk situations.

Going back to drugs for a moment (I know that area best) we have employers introducing workplace alcohol and drug policies (including drug and alcohol screening) because of, at least partially, their responsibilities under health and safety legislation - and we have major government initiatives to get people in treatment back into work (often while they are still using Methadone).

Here are 2 examples:

1. I am aware of cases where individuals on Methadone have died in Road Traffic Accidents and the Coroner has been highly critical of drug services for not notifying DVLA of the facts (thats the agency that issues driving licenses for non UK readers).
   
2. In the same month I received a phone call from a drug service asking my opinion about an offer they had received to train their clients as bus drivers. (The clients were, in many cases, still on Methadone.)

Am I the only one who finds this contradictory? Personally I would rather someone received incapacity benefit rather than drove my bus or burgled my house for that matter! At least while they received effective treatment.