Unless those drunks burned that money or threw it into the ocean, you can't really say the $250 billion was "lost." "Repurposed" is more like it. We have a services-based economy. Instead of getting spent at the mall, those billions of dollars went to alcohol makers, medical care and the criminal justice system, some of our healthiest "industries." The bulk of the estimate, for "lost productivity," is just a made-up number --- it attempts to quantify something that can't be quantified: here is one famous example: there was a strike at a hospital during which, it was noticed, the death rate at the facility actually declined, presumably because these temporarily "unproductive" doctors were not around to kill their patients. So how would an economist quantify this? Fewer dollars were spent on doctors, some folks lived a bit longer; but those fewer dollars are all the economists look at. ... All of which points to the absurdity of claiming that costs, mostly due to "lost productivity," have risen 2.7% since 2006 (even disregarding the difficulty of making any sort of dollar comparison after 10 years of inflation/deflation/stagnation). ... All of which smacks of the CDC seeking to justify its "alcohol program," whatever that is. This article simply plays to the common assumption that "sin" is socially reprehensible and costs us all a lot of money. Comforting belief perhaps but not necessarily true. .... An aside: What would really be interesting, if possible, would be an analysis of how much money habitual drunks making poor policy decisions have cost US taxpayers --- a historian cannot help but notice how many among our political leadership are/were heavy drinkers.