Americans Spent Nearly $150 Billion On Illegal Drugs Last Year

The U.S. opioid crisis has been making headlines again this week after pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson was fined $572 for fuelling the epidemic in Oklahoma in a historic ruling.

As Statista's Niall McCarthy notes, last year, drug overdoses claimed more than 68,000 American lives and 47,000 of those deaths involved an opioid. Even though heroin, prescription opioids and synthetic opioids like fentanyl are receiving most of the attention, deaths from other drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine are increasing.

A new report from the RAND Corporation has shed light on just how many people use illicit drugs across America as well as how much they pay for them.

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