The opioid addiction crisis caused nearly 1 million to be absent from the workforce in 2015, a new study says.
The American Action Forum, a right-leaning think tank, released a study on Tuesday that revealed 919,400 people between the ages of 25 to 54 were not in the labor force due to opioid use.
Additionally, the study found that the reduction of the workforce resulted in the slowing U.S. economic growth rate by 0.2 percentage points between 1999 and 2015. Altogether, this cost the U.S. economy approximately $702.1 billion in real output.
“The recent decline in the labor force participation rate of prime-age workers (ages 25 to 54) is a major factor restricting long-run economic growth, and research suggests that opioid dependency is a principal reason these individuals are leaving the workforce,” the study states.
The study comes as Congress has multiple committees focused on legislation concerning the opioid crisis.
Earlier this week, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., released a discussion draft of legislation that would require drug manufacturers to to package some opioids in a smaller “blister pack” to “make it simpler for doctors to write prescriptions for smaller numbers of opioids.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioids took the lives of over 42,000 people in 2016.
