Importing the Opioid Crisis? International Trade and Fentanyl Overdoses

Timothy Moore, William Olney and Benjamin Hansen

No 31885, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The U.S. opioid crisis is now driven by fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that currently accounts for 90% of all opioid deaths. Fentanyl is smuggled from abroad, with little evidence of how this happens. We find a positive relationship between state-level imports and drug overdoses, which is consistent with fentanyl smuggling occurring via legal trade flows. This relationship accounts for 14,000-20,000 deaths per year, and is not explained by geographic differences in “deaths of despair,” general demand for opioids, or import competition. Our results suggest that fentanyl smuggling via imports is pervasive and a key determinant of recent opioid problems.

JEL-codes: F1 F6 I1 K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-int
Note: EH ITI LE PE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w31885.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31885

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w31885
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().