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| The opioid epidemic has caused significant financial effects and costs on the healthcare sector, families, and communities. In their article Truong et al. (2022) estimates that the opioid epidemic costs the healthcare sector and the criminal justice system over $1 trillion every year. For instance, the enactment of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) of 2016 implies that the federal government spends over $2.7 billion on Medicaid to expand access to recovery and harm reduction efforts for those suffering from the opioid overdose. The current situation means that the federal and state governments will spend more on treating patients with opioid use disorder that in most cases has comorbidities with other conditions (Health, 2022). However, implementing legislative measures that consolidate the current efforts and laws into one and integrates the different programs across the federal health system can improve access to healthcare (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2024). More fundamentally, the country will save billions of dollars through the implementation of effective policies, especially those aimed at prevention like disruption of supply chains of the illicit synthetic drugs. Such legislations will increase the cost, risk and difficulty of producing and trafficking the products to the U.S. market. The proposed idea will reduce these costs, improve access to health care services, and enhance harm reduction efforts at state and local levels. Through this proposed idea, the U.S. will reduce opioid overdose deaths, lower the cost of care, and even get more revenue through arresting the perpetrators and arraigning them in courts. |