The FT has an article with the following headline and subhead:
Fentanyl deaths are falling. What’s behind the decline?
The evidence points to changes in the drug supply
It’s an excellent article, but there’s really no evidence to support the subhead (which is usually written by the editor, not the journalist.)
The article does provide evidence that there has been a recent decline in the quantity of drugs seized, but that could reflect either lower supply or lower demand. To avoid “reasoning from a quantity change”, you need to look at contemporaneous changes in both price and quantity. Is a rising price of fentanyl deterring users, or is less fentanyl demand resulting in lower prices?
Another article suggests that at least in Minnesota it might be the latter:
In recent months, the price of buying fentanyl on the street in the Twin Cities metro fell to $1-$2 a pill, a longtime narcotics investigator for the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office confirmed.
That’s down from a roughly $20 price point a couple of years ago, Hennepin County Sheriff’s Major Rick Palaia said, adding that’s still about the cost far outside the metro. . . .
“Whether supply is going down or not, at least the deaths are going down,” Palaia concluded. “And we’ll continue to educate, and we’ll continue to try and take as much fentanyl off the street as we can.”
The FT article suggests what seems to me to be the most plausible explanation for the recent decline in fentanyl deaths, which began on the East Coast:
A third possibility is the idea put forward by Nabarun Dasgupta and colleagues at the US academic collective Opioid Data Lab, that much like an infectious disease epidemic, fentanyl has now worked its way through its susceptible population. Some died, others figured out ways to use without overdosing, so the remaining fentanyl-naive drug-using population has shrunk. The wave-style dynamics at work here mean it would also theoretically fit the east-west pattern.
READER COMMENTS
Billy Kaubashine
Dec 1 2024 at 8:47am
Not one single fentanyl death can be attributed to someone taking a branded drug purchased at a legitimate retailer.
I am surprised that the pharmaceutical industry hasn’t run (albeit, self-serving) public service announcements warning people about trusting any unbranded drug purchased or otherwise obtained from any source outside their supply chain.
Garrett MacDonald
Dec 1 2024 at 9:49am
Pharmaceutical companies are more likely to protect their brand image by maintaining distance from discussions about unregulated drug markets. Such a campaign could be perceived as deflecting responsibility or implying a broader connection between their products and dangerous street drugs, which would be counterproductive to their marketing and legal strategies.
Craig
Dec 1 2024 at 10:00am
“A third possibility is the idea put forward by Nabarun Dasgupta and colleagues at the US academic collective Opioid Data Lab, that much like an infectious disease epidemic, fentanyl has now worked its way through its susceptible population. ”
I think definitely something to be said about this. I do recall the crack epidemic of the 80’s/90’s to which I would add that I think when people see the ravages of a drug that alone discourages use of that specific drug. Perhaps that might help explain why we tend to see these things in waves.
steve
Dec 2 2024 at 11:53am
I think it’s a combo mostly of the Xylazine and some of the most susceptible already dead. A lot of addicts just want to get high and arent that fussy about the high. There is also almost always a sort of faddish component to almost all illegal drug use, especially the riskier ones so I think a lot of this is just this round running its course.
Steve
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