Advertising
Supported by
Guest Essay
By Maia Szalavitz
Ms. Szalavitz is an opinion that covers addiction and public policy.
In 2016, Rachel Winograd began seeing methadone patients who relapsed or dropped out of the medicine program she worked on and began overdosing and dying at an unprecedented rate. The culprit was illegally manufactured fentanyl, which is generally 50 times more potent than heroin, with some variants up to 5,000 times more potent. Fentanyl had begun to overtake heroin in Missouri.
“We saw other people fall like crazy,” Dr. Winograd said. But to their surprise, members didn’t hand out naloxone, also known as Narcan, a nasal spray or injection that can counteract an opioid overdose, in an attempt to save their lives.
In fighting to replace this policy, he found that many counselors, police officers, EMTs, and even some doctors think that distributing naloxone would do more harm than good. This would “allow” the continuation of addiction and deter treatment, he said. Or, according to others, reducing the number of deaths would increase risk-taking among others who already use drugs and inspire young people to try heroin.
Dr. Winograd, who is now director of addiction sciences at the University of Missouri-St. The Missouri Institute of Mental Health in Louis had stumbled upon a concept known as ethical risk, the concept that reducing exposure to the negative consequences of a threat makes other people more likely to accept that threat.
While this phenomenon is an obvious fear for regulators of monetary establishments (the 2008 crisis is a notorious example), there is little evidence that it is true when it comes to suitability and security. In this case, the ethical danger is much more of a political stick than a Principle shown. As we face the worst overdose death crisis in American history, we allow ethical panic about ethical danger to discard policies that have proven effective in saving lives.
Sam Peltzman, an economist at the University of Chicago, introduced the concept of ethical hazard into fitness policy in 1975. His data, he says, shows that seatbelt legislation has the opposite effect, because when drivers feel safer, they take on more threats, negating any benefits. Also known as threat compensation, the concept temporarily gained traction as an argument against regulation.
We are retrieving the content of the article.
Please allow javascript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience as we determine access. If you’re in Reader mode, log out and log in to your Times account or subscribe to the full Times.
Thank you for your patience as we determine access.
Already a subscriber? Sign in.
Want all the Times? Subscribe.
Advertising