Well color me shocked! A bunch of researchers discovered that over the past 18 years there’s a link between increased in the unemployment rate and opioid use, especially during the Great Recession. Guess all it takes is for the suburbs to get hit and all of a sudden people pay attention. – PB/TK
US Opioid Use Linked To Unemployment, Researchers Say – By Denisse Moreno (ibtimes.com) / Aug 26 2017
The use of opioids is linked to the unemployment rate, a paper published in the National Bureau of Economic Research. Researchers, who are working on the paper Macroeconomic Conditions and Opioid Abuse, analyzed the connection between drug deaths and the economic climate for their study.
The research comes as the number of opioid-related overdose deaths, which includes prescription opioids such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, and methadone, as well as heroin have quadrupled since 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
“The fact that some of the recent rise in drug deaths coincides with the Great Recession and its aftermath highlights the importance of understanding the connection between economic conditions and drug deaths,” the researchers, Alex Hollingsworth, Christopher Ruhm, and Kosali Simon, wrote in the paper.
Although the unemployment rate is currently at a record low of 4.3 percent, the paper shows those who don’t have jobs aren’t kept out of the spotlight as the country battles the opioid crisis.
Researchers looked at the how deaths and emergency department visits caused by opioids and other drugs correlated with the local unemployment rate.
Continue to ibtimes.com article: http://www.ibtimes.com/us-opioid-use-linked-unemployment-researchers-say-2583092
