Treatment or Punishment? Spatial Inequality in Opioid Use Disorder Treatment and Drug Policing

• In Event: 50211 - Community Responses to Drug Use: Grassroots Movements, Mutual Aid, and Harm Reduction

Abstract

The opioid epidemic has been a great issue, causing high mortality rates among different demographic groups over the last twenty years. Research on access to treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) generally highlights spatial characteristics such as urbanicity, driving times, and distance. Despite recent calls for more comprehensive consideration of access, little to no research considers the possibility of criminalization as a potential barrier to accessing treatment spatially. Despite the geospatial notions of access to treatment and the strong links between racial, socioeconomic status, and space and place, the prospect of criminalization presents an additional mechanism shaping spatial access to treatment. This study asks how sociodemographic characteristics shape the presence of treatment options for OUD and drug crime. Data for the proposed project comes from a combination of sources: the 2017-2021 American Community Survey 5-year estimates, geocoded point data of three modes of treatment for opioid use disorder in Harris County, Texas from the treatment locator on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration website, and monthly drug crime data from the Harris County Police Department’s website. This longitudinal and spatially-oriented data set addresses the connection between sociodemographic characteristics, drug crime, and the presence of OUD treatment at the census block level in Harris County, Texas. I estimate two rounds of KHB logit models, which allow me to see estimates for the independent relationship between a predictor and the outcome variable in conjunction with the estimates for the predictor in the fully adjusted model. The first round of KHB models estimates the presence of treatment as an outcome variable, and the second round estimates drug crime as an outcome variable. Research in this area is important for understanding inequalities in OUD treatment and drug-related criminalization.

Author

• Michael Alden Carroll, Louisiana State University