Reddit for Studying Fentanyl Markets

• In Event: Measuring Illicit Fentanyl Markets and Evaluating Overdose Intervention

Abstract

Fatal overdoses from synthetic opioids, most notably fentanyl, steadily increased more than 25-fold in the United States over 15 years, peaking at 76,000 in 2023.  This paper examines the social media platform Reddit for its potential in studying illicit fentanyl markets and drug use behavior. Drawing on posts from r/fentanyl and related subreddits, most notably r/heroin and r/meth, I lay out the groundwork for future research projects that seek to learn from Reddit data and triangulate Reddit findings with more traditional data sources, including mortality records, seizure data, and treatment utilization data. I describe the limitations of Reddit data in research, the advantages, and introduce multiple methodologies and techniques for learning from the data. I first “open code” r/fentanyl to identify common themes of discussion, explore sentiments on conversation topics, and lay the groundwork for future research directions. Employing natural language processing techniques and computational keyword analysis, I explore how different themes develop and trend over time. I then outline three qualitative projects and share preliminary findings that emerged from this exploratory work. First, I explore how adulterants, most notably xylazine ("tranq"), and emerging drugs, most notably nitazenes, are discussed on r/fentanyl and related subreddits, employing qualitative content analysis on subsets of posts across r/fentanyl, r/heroin, and r/meth. Second, many r/fentanyl users discuss buprenorphine dosing alongside, instead of, or while switching from fentanyl. I present qualitative content analysis of posts identified through keywords ("bupe," "suboxone," "subs") and construct a dataset of user-reported dosage information. Third, I build a novel dataset of user-volunteered dosage and retail price data, for example users reporting paying $5 per pill or using 20 pills per day, which holds significant promise for tracking market conditions and supply disruptions over time. Together, these analyses demonstrate Reddit's potential as a real-time, low-cost complement to traditional drug surveillance systems, while surfacing important limitations around selection bias, platform moderation, and data validity.

Author

• Kasey Vangelov, University of Maryland, College Park
  Presenting Author