Here's the article:
foxnews.com/politics/fentanyls-financial-grip-us-skyrocketed-2-7-trillion-height-biden-admin-study

They arrive at this number saying that it cost America this much through loss of productive potential, through medical bills and burials, through unemployment burdens, etc. Fentanyl is like a massive leech sucking the country's blood by the gallon.

The best thing to do is force a cold turkey separation from these hard drugs. The typical way of drug rehab works for *some* people, but opiates are so addictive that relapses are most common among them.
Forget it. We need to be so aggressive in enforcement at the border and through policing that fentanyl is nearly impossible to obtain.

The article states that around 75 thousand people died from opioid related causes. A question for your libertarian friend a who insist that "prohibition doesn't work" is this: should private citizens have the right to inflict this sort of drug slavery and death on their fellow citizens?

Scripture prescribes the death penalty for manstealers, those who would rob people of their freedom by kidnapping them and selling them into slavery.
The people who push these drugs are doing the same thing, only the chain and collar are fentanyl and needles, and the withdrawals take the place of the whip.
Duterte's solution in the Philippines was the correct one and America should do likewise.

“Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death."
-Exodus 21:16