Corporations Join the Fight

A group of top business executives from major companies throughout Orange County was brought together last month in a high-level conference to learn more about a growing problem that is costing them millions of dollars each year. The problem is substance abuse among employees.

The meeting was called by Walter B. Gerken, chairman of Pacific Mutual in Newport Beach, and Harry G. Bubb, the company’s president, as a place to start toward more actively involving employers and the workplace in educating the community about drug and alcohol abuse.

To its credit, the insurance firm also included AIDS in the meeting’s agenda. That was significant, considering that with no cure for the deadly disease in sight, public education remains the most effective way to combat its spread--and that most business firms in the county still have no AIDS education policy or program in force.

The fact that the meeting was held at all is noteworthy. But what is most encouraging is that it wasn’t just some get-together where a bunch of business executives cluck over a serious corporate and community problem, planning all along to forget it.

At the end of that session, Gerken suggested that the business leaders not only go back to their companies and launch educational programs but also encourage others to do so. Gerken also suggested that a task force be formed to develop an education program for the business community. The suggested program would include company-sponsored seminars conducted by health experts, videotapes and brochures that employees can take home to their families, company newsletters with the most up-to-date information on AIDS and substance abuse, and awareness material on company bulletin boards. That was less than three weeks ago.

On Tuesday, that task force of executives from some of the county’s largest, and most enlightened, employers will hold its first meeting. That’s the kind of responsive and rapid action long needed in the fight against AIDS and substance abuse.

Nationwide, Orange County is in the top 30% of counties that have to deal with problems caused by alcohol abuse. According to the latest figures, compiled more than three years ago, alcohol abuse in 1983 cost the county an estimated $980 million in lost production, health care, crimes and accidents.

The problem is pervasive. It has been estimated that 160,000 county residents are now chemically dependent. Drug and alcohol abuse reduces an employee’s performance, dramatically increases absenteeism and triples the use of medical benefits. One estimate last year set the cost of chemical dependency for a hypothetical company of 1,000 employees at more than $500,000 a year. And then there are the broken homes, families and lives that involve an incalculable cost.

The need for company policies and public education on AIDS is every bit as great, not only for the sake of afflicted employees, but to teach healthy employees and their families about the fatal disease and to dispel many of the myths that surround it. In a recent survey of 154 large companies in the county, 34 reported having workers ill with AIDS. As of last month, there were 391 active cases of AIDS and 236 deaths reported in the county. Only 15 states in the nation had more cases than that last year. And the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has projected the county’s cumulative AIDS caseload to be 1,425 by 1990.

Maybe it was the realization in the business community that it had done so little for so long that prompted the swift new awareness. The actual expenses and loss of employee productivity involved with drug and alcohol abuse are certainly factors no good business leader can ignore. And the broken lives and problems that AIDS and substance abuse visit upon the community must certainly have pricked the corporate conscience. Whatever the reason, the major employers are needed and welcome allies in the county’s war against ignorance about AIDS and the misuse of drugs and alcohol.