A new study from the University of South Florida shows that laws meant to control opioid use may also help reduce domestic violence. This research suggests that good public health policies can have wider benefits than we might expect.
The study was done by a USF student, Minglu Sun, and economics professor Andrei Barbos. They looked at how opioid misuse affects society and found that it can lead to more than just health problems — it can also increase violence in homes.
They focused on special programs called Mandatory Access Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs. These programs make doctors check a shared database before giving out opioid prescriptions. This helps stop people from getting the same drugs from different doctors at once. In the 2010s, many states started using these programs to fight the growing opioid crisis.
Because different states started these programs at different times, the researchers could study how they worked in various places over time. They used crime data from 31 states between 2007 and 2019, looking closely at things like income, job status, health, and other laws.
The results were clear: in places with these opioid monitoring programs, domestic violence dropped by about 10%, especially in cases of simple assault (the most common type of domestic violence, involving minor physical harm and no weapons).
The biggest drop in violence was seen in states where opioid use was already high, especially in the South.
Before, experts only saw a link between opioid use and domestic violence — they didn’t know if one caused the other. But this study shows that cutting back on opioid access can actually cause a drop in domestic violence. This gives leaders more reason to support these programs, especially during the ongoing fentanyl crisis.
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