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BOSTON (AP) – The opioid crisis is costing $ 2.5 billion a year in the past, but they are not showing up. addicted family member they can not focus on their jobs.
That's among the findings of a report released Wednesday by the business-backed Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.
While the addiction crisis – which has occurred in Massachusetts residents in recent years – it has been measured by the social and emotional toll.
"There's an old business school," said foundation president Eileen McAnneny . "The economic impact is a crisis itself."
One big reason the opioid epidemic is likely to be that it is a threat to make it harder to find and keep employees in an already tight labor market, McAnneny said.
According to the report, opioids have kept an estimated 32,700 people from participating in the labor force in Massachusetts over the past seven years.
The report was pegged at $ 5.9 billion in the total economic impact of the state of the world.
$ 1.1 billion for 2017 overdoses.
Without a significant drop in opioid misuse and overdose deaths, the state will face an unprecedented constraint to growth, "the report said.
"People may have a sense that they are not enough," McAnneny said in an interview.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers in a report last year pegged the true cost of the opioid epidemic nationwide, including fatalities caused by heroin and other illicit opioids, at a staggering $ 504 billion in 2015. opioid misuse and dependence, including health care and lost productivity.
Republican Gov. Charlie Baker signed two major bills aimed at addressing the opioid crisis during his first four years in office and said after winning re-election Nov. 6 that the opioid abuse crisis will remain a top priority in his second term.
There have been some signs the state may be turning a corner.
In 2017 there was a 4 percent drop in opioid-related overdose deaths compared with 2016, according to the state Department of Public Health. The number of confirmed opioid-related overdose deaths for 2017 was still a sobering 1.909, compared with 2.089 in 2016 and 1.685 in 2015, according to statistics released in August.
The number of opioid-related deaths in the first trimester of 2018, but there are still troubling trends, most notably that the presence of fentanyl in an overdose has reached an all-time high. The powerful opioid has been discovered in toxicology tests for nearly 90 percent of those who died from opioid-related overdose deaths this year.
(Copyright (c) 2018 The Associated Press This article may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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