The Opioid Crisis

Background:

The United States is experiencing a national crisis regarding the use of synthetic and non- synthetic opioids, either for the treatment and management of pain (legal, prescription use) or for recreational purposes (illegal, non-prescription use). Federal organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are struggling to “save lives and prevent negative health effects of this epidemic, such as opioid use disorder, hepatitis, and HIV infections, and neonatal abstinence syndrome.”1 Simply enforcing existing laws is a complex challenge for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), among others.

There are implications for important sectors of the U.S. economy as well. For example, if the opioid crisis spreads to all cross-sections of the U.S. population (including the college-educated and those with advanced degrees), businesses requiring precision labor skills, high technology component assembly, and sensitive trust or security relationships with clients and customers might have difficulty filling these positions. Further, if the percentage of people with opioid addiction increases within the elderly, health care costs and assisted living facility staffing will also be affected.

The DEA/National Forensic Laboratory Information System (NFLIS), as part of the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) Office of Diversion Control, publishes a data-heavy annual report addressing "drug identification results and associated information from drug cases analyzed by federal, state, and local forensic laboratories." The database within NFLIS includes data from crime laboratories that handle over 88% of the nation's estimated 1.2 million annual state and local drug cases. For this problem, we focus on the individual counties located in five (5) U.S. states: Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee. In the U.S., a county is the next lower level of government below each state that has taxation authority.