The opioid epidemic just keeps getting worse.
Approximately 71,568 predicted drug overdose deaths were reported for the 12-month period to January, a jump from 67,114 predicted deaths from drugs in January 2017, according to newly released data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There are even more suspected deaths, which are still being investigated.
The predicted number of deaths from drug overdoses rose 33% in Nebraska and 24% in New Jersey over the same period. Nebraska had the largest increase, but it is also one of the states with the fewer numbers of drug overdoses: Only 152 reported deaths occurred for the 12-month period to January in that state, compared to 2,585 in North Carolina.
Twelve states have seen a drop in overdose deaths year over year, most of which are in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain regions. Wyoming saw the greatest drop, at 33% for the 12-month period to January, and has one of the fewest numbers of predicted cases at 61 for the 12 months to January, down from 91 for the same period in 2017.
White Americans seem to be at the greatest risk for death by opioid, according to a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine last year. The rise in fatal drug overdoses is almost entirely responsible for the growth in mortality rates for white, non-Hispanic people between the ages of 22 and 56 in recent years.
The rise in fatal drug overdoses is almost entirely responsible for the growth in mortality rates for white, non-Hispanic people between the ages of 22 and 56 in recent years, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Mortality rates for that population rose by 21.2 deaths per 100,000 people between 1999 and 2015, the study found. If drug mortality rates had stayed at 1999 levels, mortality rates would have actually declined for men in that population considerably and risen only slightly for women.
Recent analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that recent increases in drug overdose deaths “are driven by continued sharp increases in deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone, such as illicitly manufactured fentanyl.”
And all races have shown an increase in opioid-related deaths, the CDC found. “No area of the United States is exempt from this epidemic—we all know a friend, family member, or loved one devastated by opioids,” CDC principal deputy director Anne Schuchat said in a statement.
From 2015 to 2016, opioid-involved deaths increased among men, women, people above the age of 15, whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asian/Pacific Islanders, the CDC said. “The largest relative rate change occurred among blacks (56.1%),” it added.
Of the estimated 50,000 Americans who died of drug overdoses in 2015, some 63% involved opioids. That same year, more than 33,000 Americans died of drug overdoses involving opioids, according to a report from The Council of Economic Advisers, an agency that is part of the Executive Office of the President. That’s more than quadruple the rate of overdose deaths involving opioids in 1999, according to the CDC.
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 emergency-room 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.
But the new analysis from CEA is higher because it goes beyond “conventional methods” to account for the value of lives lost, the authors of the report said. Plus, since the previous studies, the opioid crisis has worsened and caused more deaths.
Even before the CEA’s analysis, the estimated costs of the crisis were staggering. Patients with untreated opioid use disorders tend to incur $18,000 more in health-care costs annually than those without such a disorder, according to a 2011 study in the American Journal of Pharmacy Benefits.
Hospitals
One study from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston found that the average cost of treating an opioid overdose victim in intensive care units jumped 58% between 2009 and 2015. As the addiction persists, patients arrive in a worse condition and require longer stays. In 2015, average cost among 162 academic hospitals was $92,400 per patient in intensive care.
Criminal justice
The U.S. spent nearly $8 billion on criminal justice-related costs due to selling and consuming opioids, which was almost entirely a cost to state and local governments, according to the 2015 National Center for Injury Prevention and Control study published in the journal Medical Care. Worse, the recidivism rate for drug addicts is around 45% within three years of prison release.
Businesses
The cost in lost productivity is about $20 billion, the 2015 study found. Some seven in 10 employers have felt some effect of prescription drug usage among their employees, including absenteeism or decreased job performance, according to the National Safety Council, a nonprofit based in Illinois. And fatal overdoses cost nearly $22 billion in health care and lost productivity costs.
Unseen costs
Of course, these are just the costs researchers can actually measure, said Curtis Florence, one of the authors of the study published in Medical Care. It doesn’t even begin to touch the impact on quality of life or pain endured by those affected. As Trump said Thursday: “No part of our society, not young or old, rich or poor, urban or rural, has been spared this plague of drug addiction.”
Get a daily roundup of the top reads in personal finance delivered to your inbox. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Personal Finance Daily newsletter. Sign up here.
