Opioid Crisis Cost Economy $504 Billion in 2015: White House

Deputy sheriffs, police officers, and EMS officers at the home of a man who is overdosing in the Drexel neighborhood of Dayton, Ohio, on Aug. 3, 2017. Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times

WASHINGTON—The economic cost of the opioid crisis in 2015 was $504 billion, or 2.8 percent of GDP, according to estimates from the president’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).

This is over six times larger than the most recent estimated economic cost of the epidemic.