The use and abuse of prescription opioids have cost Huntington, West Virginia and surrounding Cabell County more than $3.3 billion in lost lives and excess health care costs, a Harvard health economist has found.

According to the Associated Press, Thomas McGuire, professor of health economics at Harvard Medical School, testified in a civil lawsuit brought by the city and county against drug distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corp., accusing the companies of pushing opioid use to increase their profits and thereby fueling the addiction crisis in the community.

With a population of 92,000, Cabell County is a center for the opioid trade in West Virginia.  The fatality rate from opioids is three times higher in the county than the rest of West Virginia, and ten times higher than the national average.

McGuire estimated that $2.8 billion of the loss came from lost economic contributions by those addicted to opioids as well as other economic losses from family and businesses affiliated with addicts and those who died from overdoses.  More than $500 million was lost in excess health care costs.

While McGuire studied the impact of prescription opioids, he could not break out the impact of those obtained legitimately through prescriptions versus those obtained illegally.  He also did not take into consideration the costs of people who transitioned to illegal drugs like heroin.

Cardinal Health attorney Ashley Hardin argued that the researcher’s testimony should be thrown out because he could not isolate the expenses accrued because of the actions of each individual defendant.