How Jailing Drug Users Increases Opioid Overdoses

The standard view of the opioid epidemic blames pharmaceutical companies and doctors for excessive prescribing. An alternate view blames government for outlawing or restricting access to opioids.  In this view, users overdose not from medical use but from consuming diverted or black market opioids of unpredictable quality and potency.Current restrictions also causes overdoses by enforcing abstinence on people, who then lose their tolerance to opioids.   Some such people nevertheless return to their pre-abstinence dose, with disastrous consequences, when no longer forced to abstain.  A key illustration is released prisoners.A study byHarding-Pink and Frye (1988) examined 102 sudden deaths of prisoners that occurred within 17 years of their release. The study found that of the 102 deaths, 42 were drug related. Further, while 41 percent of thetotal deaths were drug-related, 66 percent of the deaths within one year of release were drug-related. The study also found that 60 percent of all of the drug-related deaths occurred within the first year, and the first year had twice as many drug-related deaths as the next three combined.Binswanger et. al. (2007) examined the deaths of all inmates released from Washington State Department of Corrections from 1999-2003. Overdoses caused a quarter of all deaths, with a yearly mortality rate of 181 per 100,000, 13 times the rate of an average Washington state resident. Further, over a quarter of the total post-release overdose deaths occur...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs