The goal of this project is to assess the effect of opioid drug prescription regulations on (1) the volume of opioids prescribed, and (2) drug overdose deaths.
The opioid epidemic, tracing back to its root, started in the late 1990s when pharmaceutical companies failed to reveal the truly addictive nature of opioid pain relievers to the medical community. Increased opioid prescriptions led to widespread substance abuse in communities across the country. According to the CDC, more than half a million people in the United States died of opioid drug overdose from 1999 to 2020, leaving families in devastation from losing their loved ones. Many state legislatures passed laws in an attempt to contain drug overdose deaths by restricting the over-prescription of opioids. The goal of this project is to estimate the effectiveness of policy interventions in Texas, Florida, and Washington. The analysis is crucial because it teases out effective policy interventions and provides a reference to future legislative changes that aim to save thousands of lives.
Two types of analyses were performed: the pre-post analysis and the difference-in-difference analysis.
- The pre-post analysis evaluates the legislative impact on opioid shipments and overdose death before and after policy interventions. If opioid prescriptions and drug-related deaths climb upward prior to policy implementations, we expect effective policies will manifest through downward trends in the years post-implementation. On the other hand, we expect similar growth in the graphs if the policy fails to produce an effect.
- The difference-in-difference analysis helps answer the question of whether changes in the number of opioid prescriptions and overdose deaths were truly the results of policy interventions. We compared the opioid shipment per capita and drug mortality rate from 2003 to 2015 between target states (Texas, Florida, and Washington) and surrounding states that did not place regulations on opioids.
- Opioid Prescriptions Data (2006-2014) from The Washington Post
- Mortality Data caused by Drug Overdose (2003-2015) from the US Vital Statistics records
- County Population Data (2003-2015) from the United States Census Bureau
The series of legislations in Florida proves to be the most effective in limiting opioid shipments and moderately effective in reducing drug overdose deaths. Texas’s approach to combating the opioid epidemic also had a positive impact on lowering the mortality rate. We observed a slow decline in drug-induced mortality after the state legislation went into effect. On the contrary, the policy intervention in Washington seemed to be the least effective. Overdose deaths continued to increase even at a faster rate than before policy changes. While opioid shipments dropped initially and then plateaued after policy adoption in Washington, the surrounding states experienced similar trends. Therefore, we cannot attribute the reduction in opioid shipments to the state’s legislative actions.