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...