Opioid control rules related to a decrease in domestic violence

The new study conducted by the University of South Florida reveals that opioid control policy can offer wider benefits from public health, including a reduction in cases of domestic violence. Since decision -makers are still struggling with the opioid epidemic, this study emphasizes the power of research to inform about effective public policy.

Research conducted by the USF Ming Mingl Sun and Andrea Barbos, a professor of economics, emphasizes how opioid abuse can cause a strong wave effect in the whole society.

Published in the study, it analyzes the impact on the dissemination of domestic violence in compulsory prescription drug monitoring programs. These opioid control programs require healthcare providers to consult a centralized database before prescribing opioids, helping to prevent patients from obtaining many prescriptions from many doctors. At the beginning of 2010, the states began to transfer legal provisions that ordered the use of these databases after disease control centers, and other agencies stated that they are a key tool for combating the improper use of opioids.

Socked implementation of these programs throughout the country was a unique opportunity to analyze their effects in time and in different regions, which allowed us to isolate the effects of these opioid control programs to disseminate domestic violence from other factors, such as economic cycles, while at the same time changes in policy or wider trends of crime. “

Andrei Barbos, associate professor of economics, University of South Florida

Thanks to the data from the national incident -based reporting system, they developed reports from 31 states in 2007–2019 in order to create controlled models of dynamic variables, including demographics, income, unemployment, health, insurance and overlapping of regulations, such as legalized marijuana.

Sun and Barbos have found that these opioid control programs not only limit improper use, but contributed to a 10% reduction in the spread of simple seizures, which constitute almost 75% of incidents with domestic violence in data. Simple assaults are generally defined as an attempt to cause physical damage to another person who does not cover weapons or causes serious injuries.

The effect was the strongest in the US with the highest opioid prescription indicators. According to CDC, the southern states consistently show higher indicators – strengthening the relationship between access to opioids and domestic violence.

“Earlier public health literature has documented a correlation between opioid consumption and domestic violence, but correlation does not mean a causal relationship,” said Barbos. “In this article, he defines a causal relationship and provides decision -makers with evidence of an additional positive overflow of opioid control policies, which may also be relevant to the policy project surrounding the current fentanyl crisis.”