Date de publication
Géographie
Langue de la ressource
Texte disponible en version intégrale
Open Access / OK to Reproduce
Évalué par des pairs
L’objectif
Police seizures of illegal opioids remain a dominant strategy for addressing substance use and overdose in the United States and throughout the world, yet qualitative accounts and quantitative analyses exhibit positive associations between police opioid seizures and ensuing risk of fatal overdose. Since these associations run counter to the commonly held belief that removing potent illegal substances from the community has a protective effect on overdose, a causal model is needed to demonstrate this association and convey the overdose risks that follow from police opioid seizures.
Constatations/points à retenir
The urgent need to prevent or reduce opioid withdrawal symptoms, changes in opioid tolerance resulting from the period of involuntary abstinence following a supply interruption, the uncertain potency of replacement illegal opioids, measures meant to reduce future risk of opioid seizures, and reduced aversion to risky behavior all synthesize to increase a person’s risk of fatal overdose in the aftermath of a police opioid seizure. Strategies that emphasize police opioid seizures without accounting for the elevated risk of fatal overdose that results can worsen the problem they are meant to address.
La conception ou méthodologie de recherche
Leveraging well-established biological and psychological outcomes of opioid use disorder and opioid supply interruption, this analysis presents an individual-level casual model that begins at the point of opioid dependence, introduces an interruption to an individual’s supply of opioids as the result of a police drug seizure, and presents the physical and behavioral outcomes that increase the ensuing risk of fatal overdose.
