The Impact of Naloxone Access Laws on Opioid Overdose Deaths in the U.S

Elham Erfanian (), Alan Collins () and Daniel Grossman ()
Additional contact information
Elham Erfanian: Regional Research Institute, West Virginia University
Alan Collins: Division of Resource Economics and Management, West Virginia University
Daniel Grossman: Department of Economics, West Virginia University

Working Papers from Regional Research Institute, West Virginia University

Abstract: Opioid overdose is the leading cause of unintentional death in the U.S. Narcan TM (Naloxone) is a prescription medicine that can reverse overdose effects. This research investigates the effect of Naloxone access laws on overdose death rates using state and temporal variation in the enactment of these laws. We also explore possible spillover effects between Naloxone access laws and overdose death rates across states. Our analyses reveal that when broken down by access law provisions, there exists a mixture of positive and negative effects on overdose death rates depending upon the provision. The results indicate that Naloxone access provisions have regional impacts by influencing overdose death rates within the state enacted and have a spillover effect in neighboring states. The magnitude of spillover effects is larger than direct effects in the states. Looking across multiple provisions, our findings provide no statistical evidence that these laws reduce opioid death rates.

Keywords: opioid overdose death; Naloxone access law; spatial spillovers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C3 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2018-01-23
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/rri_pubs/37/ (application/pdf)

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:rri:wpaper:2018wp03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Regional Research Institute, West Virginia University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Randall Jackson ().