Associations between opioid overdose deaths and drugs confiscated by law enforcement and submitted to crime laboratories for analysis, United States, 2014-2019: an observational study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The overdose epidemic in the United States (US) continues to generate unprecedented levels of mortality. There is urgent need for a national data system capable of yielding high-quality, timely, and actionable information on existing and emerging drugs. Public health researchers have started using law enforcement forensic laboratory data to obtain surveillance information on illicit drugs. This study is the first to use drug reports from the entire US to examine correlations between a changing drug supply and increasing opioid-involved overdose deaths (OOD) on a national scale.

Methods

This study is observational and investigates associations between law enforcement drug reports and OOD for the US from 2014 to 2019. OOD data are from the Centers for Disease

SUBMITTER: Zibbell JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10423896 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature