WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- The economic cost of the opioid crisis plaguing the United States stood at about 504 billion U.S dollars in 2015, according to a report released by the White House Council of Economic Advisers on Monday.
The council said the figure accounted for 2.8 percent of the gross domestic product that year, and is over six times larger than the most recently estimated economic cost of the epidemic.
"The previous estimates of the economic cost of the opioid crisis greatly understate it by undervaluing the most important component of the loos-fatalities resulting from overdoses," the White House said in a press release.
The report, according to the White House, estimated the economic cost of these deaths using conventional economic estimates for valuing life routinely used by federal agencies,
It also adjusted for underreporting of opioids in overdoses deaths, included heroin-related fatalities, and incorporated non-fatal costs of opioid misuse.
Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump declared opioid abuse a national public health emergency but he did not direct any new funding to address what he said the worst drug crisis in the nation's history.
The president commission to combat the opioid epidemic argued in an interim report for the declaration of a state of national emergency that would free more money and resources toward the effort.
But the panel only called for more drug courts and more training for doctors in its final report issued earlier this month.
The White House said the opioid "has reached crisis levels" in the country. In 2015, over 33,000 Americans died of a drug overdose involving opioids.
Last year, opioid-related deaths increased 55 percent to 64,000 deaths.
