Study: Overdoses spike following auto plant closures

Opioid overdoses deaths spiked across the U.S. where automotive plants — including the former GM assembly plant in Moraine, Ohio — closed, a new study found (Source: “Opioid overdoses followed auto plant closures, study says,” Dayton Daily News, Jan. 8, 2020).

The study published in JAMA Internal Medicine highlights the role of declining economic opportunity in the U.S. and cities like Dayton had on the opioid overdose crisis.

“When people lose their job, you see increasing amounts of anxiety and depression. They are not only disorders that affect the mind, they are physical disorders that affect the body and make your body ache and makes your body physically tired,” said Jodi Long, associate director for Montgomery County Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services.

The study, whose lead author was Dr. Atheendar Venkataramani of the Perelman School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania, stated that the researchers’ findings “should not be interpreted in such a way as to diminish the role of opioid supply, either from physician prescriptions or from illicitly made and supplied synthetic substances, in the U.S. opioid overdose crisis.”