Surprising effects of drug policy

Abstract

Overdose death rates have been increasing exponentially since 1979, leading me to ask how state-level drug access policy is affecting this trend. Previous research identifies three main approaches states take: restricting prescription medication, increasing medication-assisted addiction treatment access, and increasing marijuana legality. The findings of this research are inconclusive due to inconsistent measures of overdose deaths and a lack of inclusion of all policy approaches. Using previous preliminary findings and economic substitution theory, I create four hypotheses to test the interactive effects of the policy approaches. I remedy the issues in previous research by constructing a new dataset that includes the three main approaches, a measure of all drug overdose deaths, and other policies I think may confound the results. Using a two-way fixed effects model, I find that most policies and policy interactions lead to a significant increase in overdose deaths. When looking at the marginal effects of these policy interactions, all fail to reach significance. These findings call in to question the current approaches to overdose reduction and leave room for future research.