Earnings and drug addiction - Help

We need some ideas on data sources for a case. Any help will be much appreciated

Here is the situation (from a popular list serv):

Assume a 20 year old woman, working as a sales clerk at a national known department store. She had been at the store for about one year. She was injured in an motor vehicle accident. It appears she will not be able to return to work.

Prior to the injury the young woman had dropped out of college, and was going through out patient rehabilitation for substance abuse. The woman had gone to college on an academic scholarship. She had very good grades until her addiction took control. She became heavily addicted to prescription drugs, left school, went through detox and became active in AA and NA.

She wanted to be more than one year sober before she returned to college so she took a job at the department store. Assume that the plaintiff is willing to let the world know of her addiction and the judge allows that into evidence.

Does anyone have any statistics or research reports on ex-addicts and their employment options / limitations/ etc?

What if her period of addiction was brief, only a few months?

What if this was her third time through rehab and her addiction has run off hand on for five years?

We will forward the answers and comments to the economist in need!