White House: Opioid Crisis Cost $504 Billion in 2015, 6 Times More Than Earlier Estimates

By Ariel Cohen / November 20, 2017 at 3:03 PM
The White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) announced Monday (Nov. 20) that the U.S. government has underestimated the cost of the opioid crisis, and that in 2015 the economic cost was $504 billion, or over six times more than the most recently estimated cost of the epidemic. The figure accounted for roughly 2.8 percent of the GDP that year. The CEA writes in the report, titled The Underestimated Cost of the Opioid Crisis , that compiling new data on...


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