The economic costs of pain
in the United States
Source: National Institute on Drug Abuse (Revised June
2017)
Every day, more than 90 Americans die after overdosing on
opioids.The misuse of and addiction to opioids—including
prescription pain relievers, heroin, and synthetic opioids such as
fentanyl—is a serious national crisis that affects public health
as well as social and economic welfare. The Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention estimates that the total "economic burden"
of prescription opioid misuse alone in the United States is $78.5
billion a year, including the costs of healthcare, lost
productivity, addiction treatment, and criminal justice
involvement.
How did this happen?
In the late 1990s, pharmaceutical companies reassured the medical
community that patients would not become addicted to prescription
opioid pain relievers, and healthcare providers began to prescribe
them at greater rates. This subsequently led to widespread diversion
and misuse of these medications before it became clear that these
medications could indeed be highly addictive.3,4 Opioid overdose
rates began to increase. In 2015, more than 33,000 Americans died as
a result of an opioid overdose, including prescription opioids,
heroin, and illicitly manufactured fentanyl, a powerful synthetic
opioid.1 That same year, an estimated 2 million people in the United
States suffered from substance use disorders related to prescription
opioid pain relievers, and 591,000 suffered from a heroin use
disorder (not mutually exclusive).5 Here is what we know about the
opioid crisis:
- Roughly 21 to 29 percent of patients
prescribed opioids for chronic pain misuse them.6
- Between 8 and 12 percent develop an
opioid use disorder.7–9
- An estimated 4 to 6 percent who
misuse prescription opioids transition to heroin.7–9
- About 80 percent of people who use
heroin first misused prescription opioids.7
This issue has become a
public health crisis with devastating consequences including
increases in opioid misuse and related overdoses, as well as the
rising incidence of neonatal abstinence syndrome due to opioid use
and misuse during pregnancy. The increase in injection drug use has
also contributed to the spread of infectious diseases including HIV
and hepatitis C. As seen throughout the history of medicine, science
can be an important part of the solution in resolving such a public
health crisis.
