An analysis has found that substance abuse annually costs Tennessee more than $2 billion, with most of it attributed to lost income from people who've fallen out of the labor market.
At $1.29 billion, the lost income from having an estimated 31,000 people, or 1 percent of the workforce, out of jobs accounts for the biggest component.
Other listed costs include $138 million for hospitalizations with alcohol listed as the first diagnosis and $46 million for babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome.
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.