Warning that trafficking in synthetic opioids is a “threat to our national security and global competitiveness,” a bipartisan congressional group put a staggering dollar figure on the death, suffering and dislocation that have occurred in its wake: $1 trillion per year.
Established in 2020, the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking was charged with examining the flow of lab-manufactured drugs into the U.S. The commission includes members of both houses of Congress, as well as staff from numerous federal departments and agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
According to the commission’s report released Monday, more than 100,000 people died of drug overdoses in the year ending last June, an increase of nearly a third from the year before. And synthetic opioids such as fentanyl accounted for the majority of those deaths.
Since 1999, overdoses have been responsible for more than 1 million deaths. “In terms of loss of life and damage to the economy, illicit synthetic opioids have the effect of a slow-motion weapon of mass destruction in pill form,” the report says.
Putting a price tag on suffering: The commission relies on a 2018 report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers that concludes that opioid deaths were costing the U.S $696 billion at the time. Given the steady increase in the number of deaths since then, it is “reasonable to estimate that drug overdoses are now costing the United States approximately $1 trillion annually,” the report says.
Most of the costs are associated with lost productivity, as well as health care and law enforcement.
No solution in sight: “Shockingly, the number of overdose deaths in the United States has risen exponentially since 1979 and does not appear to be dropping any time soon,” the report says. Commission co-chair Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) said in a press release that 274 Americans die every day from overdoses, the equivalent of one person every five minutes – “and every day it gets worse.”
The commission provided a long list of recommendations for addressing the crisis, including cracking down on Mexican drug cartels, which transport the majority of synthetic opioids into the U.S., as well as the Chinese manufacturers that provide some of the raw materials.
