The fentanyl and other opioid crisis is far from the US, and new research highlights that, finding that the illegal use of these substances is far more common than previous studies suggest. It’s been released today Jama Health Forum, The survey revealed that 7.5% of US adults used fentanyl, which was illegally manufactured at some point between June 2023 and June 2024. This is more than 20 times the rate of past reporting.
According to the study authors, the results suggest that new methods must be adopted to study the severity of the ongoing opioid crisis.
read more: The opioid crisis is not over
Use of fentanyl and other opioids
Illegal fentanyl is increasingly linked to fatal overdose in the United States, but the prevalence of its use is being studied. actual, National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency (SAMHSA) (SAMHSA) is one of the largest studies to track fentanyl, illegally manufactured in the United States each year, but has been tracking its substance since 2022. 0.3% Of our adults, including individuals over the age of 18, they used illegally manufactured fentanyl.
For many years, Some studies It suggests that the use of other illegal opioids, such as heroin, may be much more common than the NSDUH investigation report, leading to questions regarding the accuracy of findings regarding illegal fentanyl. Wanting to grasp the true scope of this issue, the research authors aimed to more accurately measure the use of illegally manufactured fentanyl and other illegal opioids.
Of the 1,500 US adults surveyed, approximately 7.5% reported illegal fentanyl use between June 2023 and June 2024, and approximately 11% reported illegal opioid use. The proportion of illegally manufactured fentanyl was more than 20 times higher than the NSDUH rate since 2022. This is a difference consistent with that reported in previous studies, assuming that opioid use is increasing in the previous year.
The findings suggest that illegal fentanyl use may be underestimated by NSDUH, highlighting the need to avoid such overestimation in the future.
“Estimates of illegal opioid use are rare and are usually available several years after information is collected, limiting our ability to monitor trends in the short term,” said David Powell, research author and economist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. press release. “Our research offers a method for rapid and repeated monitoring of the prevalence of illegal opioids at low cost.”
read more: This makes certain opioids more deadly than others
Intentional and unintended use
A new study conducted online and containing a drastic sample of US adults asked participants about the use of illegal fentanyl and other illegal opioids, including intentional and unintended use. Approximately 4.9% of participants reported intentionally using illegal fentanyl, and approximately 2.6% reported unintentionally using it.
Interestingly, around 25% of participants who used illegal opioids reported that illegally produced substances were involved in the use of the initial opioid, while around 39% and 36% reported that prescription or untreated prescription opioids were involved.
According to the study authors, additional research is needed to better understand the differences between results and NSDUH outcomes, but in relation to the setup of two studies, one may occur entirely online and the other partly online. Because some of the NSDUH responses have been collected directly, some respondents may have avoided accurately reporting the use of illegally manufactured fentanyl. (That being said, the research authors emphasize that online research can introduce their own issues into the data.)
According to a press release, Mireille Jacobson, another research author and economist at the University of Southern California, said: “We need closer real-time information to assess where we are trending and, more importantly, whether we are moving forward with suppressing it.”
This article does not provide medical advice and should be used for informational purposes only.
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Sam Walters is a journalist covering evolution for archaeology, paleontology, ecology and discovery, and has an assortment of other topics. Before joining the Discover team as an assistant editor in 2022, Sam studied journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
