A analysis from the University of Tennessee has found that substance abuse costs Tennessee more than $2 billion dollars annually.
Most of that attributed to lost income from people who have fallen out of the labor market. Teresa Waters is chair of preventive medicine at University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center. Her report found that an estimated 31,000 people out of jobs attributed to 1.29 billion dollars in lost income.
Other costs include $138 million for hospitalizations with alcohol as the first diagnosis and $46 million for babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome. Babies with NAS are exposed to drugs in the womb and experience withdrawal symptoms.
The White House's Council of Economic Advisers projected, in a November study, that the opioid epidemic cost the U.S. economy over $504 billion in 2015.
