Biden's drug czar: 165,000 lives might be lost annually to the opioid crisis by 2025

Rahul Gupta, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Wednesday that without policy action, 165,000 lives could be lost a year to the opioid crisis by 2025.

That would be an increase of about 55,000 additional deaths per year from the number of people who died from an overdose last year, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"There is almost no other area today, where it affects our public health, national security and economic prosperity, than the opioid crisis,” said Gupta at POLITICO’s Health Care Summit.

Gupta said if President Joe Biden’s policy initiatives to address the opioid crisis are implemented — such as funding treatment for incarcerated individuals and expanding telehealth treatment — the number of people dying each year from overdose deaths could be cut in half.

Biden’s drug czar stressed the importance of the administration focusing on addressing the opioid crisis, saying that “there is no other area where it’s a matter of life and death.”

He said 46 million Americans suffer from addiction in the country and cited the 109,000 people who died of an overdose last year.