Opioid overdoses have been on the rise (1) for the past ten years. Deaths have spiked since 2014. With the peak coming in 2020, we lost almost 70,000 fellow struggling humans that year alone. The crisis shows no signs of slowing down and researchers from MIT have a new model (2) to prove it.
The Model
Today, a Nature (3) article detailed how researchers at MIT were able to quantify patterns of opioid use and overdoses. It explains they built the model based on opioid use and deaths between 1999 and 2020. Others factors built into this model include the price & prevalence of opioids and distribution of naloxone. This model was not perfect and needed some tweaking.
The Assumption
The researchers updated their model by projecting future social policy change. MIT researchers are some of the brightest minds the world has to offer. That doesn’t mean they’re fortune tellers. Their new model predicts, “under any scenario” that overdose deaths are “likely” to peak before 2025. From here the model predicts a slow decline. As if the drug were to evaporate from planet earth and more importantly, China (4). This new model, “contradicts the widespread assumption that because overdose deaths have gone up, they will continue to go up.“ Of course it does. The new model is assuming that a miracle policy change will happen. It assumes policy is going to slow the roll of the world’s most powerful drug.
“Under an “optimistic” scenario, 543,000 people would die between 2020 and 2032, whereas a “pessimistic” scenario would see 842,000 deaths over this period.”
It’s Policy
Almost one million people lost in one decade. This is preventable. With CBP heroin and fentanyl seizures continuing to rise (5) the future is grim. Now more than ever we need to focus on supporting mental and substance use disorders. If left unchecked the opioid crisis might as well change to the opioid plague.
The MIT researches admit their model can’t be taken at face value. Their model assumes opioid use decrease after a major policy change. It doesn’t account for a trauma ridden community that might increase in use. It also doesn’t account for fentanyl use without the user’s knowledge.
In the end researchers hope, “…getting people to think in this systemic way….will be a benefit of this work.” That’s the end goal. To pander to policymakers to let them believe that new rules and regulations can stem the tide of overdosed adults.
This has surely worked in the past.
References
- Drugs most frequently involved in drug overdose deaths : United States, 2011–2016
https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/61308 - Modeling the Evolution of the US Opioid Crisis for National… https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2115714119
- “Mega-Model Predicts Us Opioid Deaths Will Soon Peak.” https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01519-z
- Fentanyl Flow to the United States https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-008-20%20Fentanyl%20Flow%20in%20the%20United%20States_0.pdf?stream=science.