GREEDY MONSTERS –
Nov. 2, 2022 – A combination of the growing numbers of people buying illegal opioids, and the ubiquity of fentanyl have driven up overdose deaths in the US to unprecedented levels. In 2020, 92,000 people died of drug overdoses. Opioids accounted for nearly 70,000 of those, up from 50,000 in 2019. Estimates for 2021 put overall overdose deaths at 103,000, with at least 82,000 tied to opioids. The costs of such a monumental crisis are hard to estimate. The most recent estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the crisis cost over $1 trillion a year, between the loss of life, expenses for medical treatments, and spending on criminal justice.
But that cost estimate is from 2017, when only 2 million Americans had an opioid-use disorder, and 48,000 died from an overdose because of it. In 2021, the number of patients with an opioid addiction is at least 3 million, and deaths reached 82,000. This makes the current epidemic at least 50% larger than it was in 2017, which would bring up the yearly cost estimate to $1.5 trillion, in line with recent cost estimates from the US Congress Joint Economic Committee.
