The opioid epidemic in the United States has inflicted a catastrophic human cost on the country. Children have lost parents, young people have had their futures destroyed, and people have suffered a gradual and painful death. Some 107,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2021. One underreported aspect is how all these tragic deaths are hurting the national economy.

• Since 2017, opioids have cost $1 trillion in opioid deaths, lost productivity and policing.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 69,000 overdose deaths to synthetic opioids in 2020. Synthetic opioids are driven by fentanyl from China coming over the southern border.
• Heroin overdoses increased 7 percent in 2020 to 13,000, according to the cdc.
• 8 percent of workplace fatalities in 2020 were due to drug overdose.
• 3 million U.S. workers are addicted to opioids.
• 75 percent of employers are affected by employees’ drug use.
• In 2021, Ohio suffered the largest annual per capita loss to the opioid epidemic at $75.6 billion, followed by Massachusetts at $36.9 billion.

Sapping the workforce: The number of middle-aged black men who died of overdose in 2021 was 54.1 per 100,000. For white men, it was 44.2 per 100,000.

Southern border: Synthetic fentanyl is inflaming the opioid pandemic. Law enforcement has tracked these drugs to labs in China. The Biden administration is allowing not only illegal immigrants to flood the country, but also deadly drugs.

Intensifying curses: The crisis at the border and the opioid epidemic are two of many curses on the United States. Many of these are self-inflicted by the radical-left policies of the Biden administration. Deuteronomy 28:45 says: “Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee.”

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry explains these curses in his Key of David program titled “The U.S. Southern Border Crisis Prophesied”: