FIRST ON FOX: The opioid crisis under the Biden administration cost the U.S. $2.7 trillion in 2023 alone, a new study exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital shows.
The Council of Economic Advisers, an agency within the executive office that advises the president on economic policy, released a study on Friday, detailing that the opioid epidemic cost the U.S. $2.7 trillion in 2023 when considering costs related to loss of life, loss of quality of life, loss of labor force productivity, crime and costs to the health care system.
The opioid epidemic has raged for years, primarily inflamed by the use of fentanyl, which is a synthetic opioid that chiefly originates in China and comes to the U.S. over the Mexico border.
President Donald Trump is in the midst of leveraging tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China to bolster border security and stem the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., which has sparked condemnation from critics that the tariffs will lead to higher costs for U.S. consumers purchasing goods originating from those three nations.
The study, however, argues that the costs of the opioid epidemic “dwarfs even pessimistic estimates of the effects of tariffs.”
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“Ever since his first entry into politics back in 2015, President Trump has been committed to tackling the opioid epidemic that is destroying American lives, families, and communities,” White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai told Fox News Digital on Friday.
“While Democrats cry foul and drum up hysteria over his use of tariff powers to save American lives from the scourge of illicit drugs like fentanyl, President Trump isn’t going to waver from using every lever of executive and legislative power to put Americans and America First — the costs of standing idly by in this drug war clearly far outweigh the exaggerated costs of fighting for American lives,” he said.
The Council of Economic Advisers study used a 2017 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that researchers adjusted to account for inflation trends, and opioid deaths and dependency, since its release.
The loss of life in 2023, for example, cost the U.S. $1.11 trillion, with the study explaining that researchers multiplied the 74,702 opioid deaths that year “by value of statistical life in the United States and then adding productivity and healthcare costs that arise due to opioid fatalities.”
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“We inflation-adjusted the $10.1 million value of a statistical life number provided by NIH (2017) to 2025 dollars ($13.0 million per life),” the study explained.
Another $1.34 trillion of the $2.7 trillion total accounts for loss of quality of life for those in the midst of opioid addiction compared to Americans who are healthy and not addicted.
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“The measure shows that life with OUD [opioid use disorder] has about 60 percent (0.626) of the quality of life of those in full health,” the study found. “Second is a measure of how much Americans value a year of life in full health. Adjusted for inflation, this value is estimated at $624,410 per person per year. Together these values imply that the lost quality of life costs $234,478 per year for each person living with OUD. We then multiply this value by the prevalence of OUD, estimated to be 5.7 million in 2023.”
The opiod crisis cost the U.S. health care system an estimated $107 billion in 2023, the study found, when accounting for treatment of individuals with opioid use disorder, relative to the average annual cost of treating patients who do not have an opioid addiction.
“This amounts to $19,000 additional dollars per year per person with OUD,” the study detailed. “These costs were primarily borne by private insurers, Medicaid, and hospitals providing uncompensated care. Ultimately, these costs are passed on to all Americans through higher insurance premiums, taxes, and healthcare expenses.”
Loss of labor productivity due to the opioid crisis cost the U.S. an estimated $107 billion, the study found. Researchers determined that figure by multiplying the number of productive work hours lost due to opioid-related deaths, addiction and incarceration by the average hourly wages and benefits for U.S. employees.
Crime was the final component in the study. The report found that police protection, court proceedings, correctional facility use and property loss stemming from opioid-related crime cost the U.S. $63 billion.
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“The enormous economic cost of the illicit opioid epidemic to Americans, estimated at $2.7 trillion in 2023 alone, underscores the urgent need to control the flow of lethal drugs pouring in from foreign countries. The human suffering and financial burden inflicted by this epidemic are unsustainable,” the conclusion of the study found.
Trump and his administration are in the midst of a border security blitz, with law enforcement agencies stretching from the Department of Homeland Security to U.S. Marshals conducting raids across the nation to deport illegal immigrants and prevent the flow of other illegal migrants entering the nation.
As part of the immigration plan, Trump announced tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China at the end of January, which included a 25% additional tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico and a 10% tariff on imports from China. Energy resources from Canada were set to have a lower tariff, at 10%.
The executive order that authorized the tariffs, which Trump signed Saturday, said they were created in light of “extraordinary” threats stemming from “illegal aliens and drugs, including deadly fentanyl.”
“This challenge threatens the fabric of our society,” the executive order states. “Gang members, smugglers, human traffickers, and illicit drugs of all kinds have poured across our borders and into our communities.
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“Canada has played a central role in these challenges, including by failing to devote sufficient attention and resources or meaningfully coordinate with United States law enforcement partners to effectively stem the tide of illicit drugs.”
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Both Canada and Mexico agreed to concessions with Trump on Monday, the day before the tariffs were set to take effect, pledging to send additional security personnel to their respective borders with the U.S. Trump agreed to pause the tariffs on the two nations for one month in light of the border security concessions.
China, on the other hand, imposed tariffs on some U.S. imports in response to Trump’s tariffs. China’s Finance Ministry said shortly after the tariff started that it would impose a tariff of 15% for coal and liquefied natural gas and 10% for crude oil, agricultural equipment and large-engine cars imported from the U.S.
Critics of the tariffs have slammed them as leading to higher costs for American spenders, citing that goods stretching from Mexican beer, Canadian lumber and imported Chinese electronics would see a rise in costs for Americans.
“It’s going to affect beer, OK,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said during a press conference in his New York office on Sunday, while warning against the tariffs and holding up a tall can of Corona Extra. “Most of it, Corona here, comes from Mexico.”
“It’s going to affect your guac — because what is guacamole made of? Avocados. If you have pizza, it’s going to affect the cost of cheese.”
Goldman Sachs estimated that the U.S. would take a 0.4% hit to the GDP over the tariffs.
The Council of Economic Advisers study, however, argued that costs related to the opioid epidemic dwarf costs related to tariffs.
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“This number dwarfs even pessimistic estimates of the effects of tariffs, like that of Goldman Sachs, who estimated losses of 0.4 percent of GDP,” the study found.
The Council of Economic Advisers released a similar report in 2019 that found the opioid epidemic cost the U.S. “$2.5 trillion for the four-year period from 2015 to 2018.”
The recent report noted that the 2019 study’s findings were smaller “because it did not include the cost of reduced quality of life and because the number of deaths in 2015 was 33,000.”
Fox News Digital’s Landon Mion and Charles Creitz contributed to this report.
