Origins of the Opioid Crisis

~ Jason Schwartz

David Juurlink posted a tweetstorm based on a new report from the National Bureau of Economic Research entitled Origins of the Opioid Crisis and Its Enduring Impacts.

It’s important because it challenges a few common claims about the opioid crisis:

  • That rx opioids were not an especially important driver of the crisis.
  • That regulatory reform would not have had much impact.
  • That the role of Purdue Pharma’s lobbying and policy advocacy has been exaggerated.
  • That despair related to economic conditions was the real driver of deaths. If it wasn’t opioid OD, it’d have been suicide, alcohol-related causes, or something else. (I’ve posted before on the “diseases of despair” theory.)

Here’s the tweetstorm. (If you received this via email and it doesn’t look right, visit recoveryreview.blog to view the actual post.)

Published by Jason Schwartz

I have been an addiction professional and social worker since 1994. I started blogging in 2005 as the Clinical Director at Dawn Farm. I no longer work at Dawn Farm and am now the Director of Behavioral Medicine at a community hospital, and a lecturer at Eastern Michigan University’s School of Social Work. Views expressed here are my own. Keep in mind that the field, the contexts in which the field operates, and my views have changed over time.

2 thoughts on “Origins of the Opioid Crisis”

  1. Pingback: Origins of the Opioid Crisis: A little more
  2. Pingback: Follow up: Origins of the Opioid Crisis

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