America


Opioid Epidemic Saps U.S. Economy


Suicides, disability claims, and more than $1 trillion in lost productivity blamed on drug crisis.


S


BY JAMES VARNEY REAL CLEAR INVESTIGATIONS


trung out on drugs half her life, Brandi Edwards, 29, said the longest she held a job before getting sober four


years ago was “about two-and-a-half months.” In jail for the ninth time on drug-


related charges and separated from her children, the West Virginia moth- er of three had an awakening in “look-


36 NEWSMAX | NOVEMBER 2022


ing hard at what I’d lost.” Now clean for four years after


rehab, she is married and back in her children’s lives with a home in Prince- ton, West Virginia, and a steady job. But such success stories are too infrequent to off set the massive cost of the opioid epidemic to the American workforce. Only a couple of people in her former addict circle have returned to productive life, she says, while most are dead or incarcerated.


That toll on labor, haunting Amer-


ica’s working present and future prob- ably for years — if not decades — to come, is largely invisible and under- reported because it is diffi cult to mea- sure, according to physicians, counsel- ors, economists, workers, and public offi cials. But its staying power is suggested


by other lasting national challenges, including the porous southern border — a major conduit for smuggled, Chi- nese-made fentanyl — and economic and social traumas set in motion by the coronavirus pandemic. In addition to untold years of pro-


ductivity lost from fatal overdoses, the nation’s labor participation rate has shrunk steadily since 2000. Precise cor- relation is elusive, but any graph of that decline would stand in sharp contrast to the rise of opioid addiction in the U.S.


AGNES BUN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES


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