The Economic Consequences of Opioid Addiction in America

President Donald Trump has declared the opioid epidemic “a public health emergency.”
It has ravaged some communities across the country. But it isn’t just killing people who
have become addicted to these powerful pain medications, it’s taking a financial toll too.
Some of the areas seeing the most overdose deaths are southwest and northeast Ohio,
eastern Kentucky, western West Virginia and western Pennsylvania, according to the
Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
Some estimates put the nationwide cost at $500 billion
The economic cost of the opioid crisis in 2015 was $504 billion, much higher than
previous estimates, according to a report from The Council of Economic Advisers
(CEA).
When taking health-care bills, criminal justice costs and lost productivity, the opioid
epidemic is costing Americans billions of dollars a year. “Nobody has seen anything like
what is going on now,” Trump said in a speech in October. “As Americans, we cannot
allow this to continue. It is time to liberate our communities from this scourge of drug
addiction.”
Opioids are killing tens of thousands of Americans every year. They include prescription
pills (including Vicodin and Oxycontin), as well as heroin and fentanyl, a drug that can
be injected or taken through a skin patch or as a lozenge.
One city is looking for pay back. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city is
seeking about $500 million in a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors, to
recover some costs New York has suffered as a result of opioid abuse.
Opioids have put a financial burden on the city, increasing the use of drug treatment
services, inpatient hospital services, medical examiner costs, criminal justice costs, and
law enforcement costs, city officials said. Those costs include about 45,000 emergencyroom
visits for opioid patients in 2017, and delivering naloxone, an antidote for
overdoses.
An analysis by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, published in the
journal Medical Care in 2016, estimated the cost of treating overdoses, abuse and
dependence on prescription opioids alone costs American society some $78.5 billion
per year.
It crunched data from 2013, when some 2 million Americans met the criteria for
prescription opioid abuse and dependence, and some 16,000 died from prescription
opioid overdoses. To put that figure in context, the U.S. spent $79.9 billion on the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that same year, the researchers
said.
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