Study: Auto Plant Closures Tied to Surge in Opioid Deaths – By Gaby Galvin (US News) / Dec 30 2019
Researchers found that in communities that suffered the shutdown of an auto plant, opioid deaths surged.
The closure of an auto assembly plant is tied to an almost immediate uptick in a community’s opioid overdose death rate, a new study indicates.
The study, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, explores how deteriorating economic conditions in manufacturing communities contributed to the nation’s opioid epidemic between 1999 and 2016. Compared to places where auto assembly plants stayed open, local opioid overdose death rates among working-age adults rose just two years after a plant shuttered, according to the study. Five years after a closure, the opioid mortality rate was 85% higher.
“Our findings illustrate the importance of declining economic opportunity as an underlying factor associated with the opioid overdose crisis,” researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania said.
Researchers analyzed opioid death rates in 112 counties – primarily in the Midwest and the South – that had nearby auto factories and high levels of manufacturing employment in 1999. Through 2016, plant closures affected 29 counties in 10 commuting zones, and compared to the 20 zones where plants stayed open, opioid mortality rates in areas with closed plants rose by 8.6 deaths per 100,000 people – despite having similar populations and overdose rates before their plants shuttered.
The link between auto plant closures and the rise in opioid-related deaths was especially harsh among white men, the study found. Among white men 18 to 34 years old, plant closures were tied to an increase of 20.1 opioid deaths per 100,000 five years later. Among younger white men and women, meanwhile, mortality increases were closely tied to illegal opioids, while prescription painkillers drove the uptick among older white men.
The findings suggest “the current opioid overdose crisis may be associated in part with the same structural changes to the U.S. economy that have been responsible for worsening overall mortality among less-educated adults since the 1980s,” researchers said.
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