{"id":154963,"date":"2019-10-10T08:01:44","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T12:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=154963"},"modified":"2019-10-10T08:04:20","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T12:04:20","slug":"war-terror-opioids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2019\/10\/war-terror-opioids\/","title":{"rendered":"Combat&#8217;s Other Toll on Veterans: Increased Risk of Addiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">n what is described as the first study of its kind, a UConn professor has found that combat service substantially increased the risk of prescription painkiller abuse and illicit heroin use among active-duty American servicemen.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">U.S. combat veterans deployed as part of the global war on terror, since 9\/11, have an opioid abuse rate that is higher than servicemen who were not deployed to combat zones, the study found.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The cost of this is high not only in human terms, but in dollars and cents. The estimated health care costs of the abuse due strictly to combat exposure is $1.04 billion per year for prescription painkiller abuse, and $470 million per year for heroin use.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While it was not part of the study, more use of medical marijuana\u00a0 \u2014 rather than opioid painkillers, which are more likely to be addictive and lethal\u00a0 \u2014 might be an answer, says <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.business.uconn.edu\/person\/resul-cesur\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Resul Cesur<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, who was the lead author of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nber.org\/papers\/w26264\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the study<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe are not saying that this is going to solve all the problems, but it seems like it\u2019s a viable alternative among the policy options,\u201d says Cesur, an associate professor of healthcare economics in the School of Business. \u201cThis is a sensitive issue. On the one hand people die from opioid abuse; on the other hand, people have severe pain. So, I don\u2019t have a quick fix and I don\u2019t have a magic solution.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>An epidemic of opioids<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The opioid crisis, of course, affects many segments of society outside of the military.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.drugabuse.gov\/drugs-abuse\/opioids\/opioid-overdose-crisis\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to the National Institute on Drug Abuse:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the late 1990s, pharmaceutical companies reassured the medical community that patients would not become addicted to prescription opioid pain relievers <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.drugabuse.gov\/publications\/misuse-prescription-drugs\/what-classes-prescription-drugs-are-commonly-misused\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">such as<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Vicodin, OxyContin and Percocet, and healthcare providers began to prescribe them at greater rates. \u201cThis subsequently led to widespread diversion and misuse of these medications before it became clear that these medications could indeed be highly addictive.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Every day, more than 130 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The total &#8220;economic burden&#8221; of prescription opioid misuse alone in the United States is $78.5 billion a year, including the costs of healthcare, lost productivity, addiction treatment and criminal justice involvement.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Worse in the military<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cesur\u2019s study was published in September by the non-profit National Bureau of Economic Research.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Cesur is a faculty research fellow at the bureau, which is based in Cambridge, Mass. His <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nber.org\/people\/joseph_sabia\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">co-authors<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> were Joseph Sabia, an economist at San Diego State University; and David Bradford, a professor of public administration and policy at the University of Georgia.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The authors say the study is the first to estimate the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">impact of combat deployments in the global war on terrorism on opioid abuse. It was based on findings from two surveys of thousands of male military veterans over a period of years done by the University of North Carolina and the U.S. Department of Defense.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cesur gave a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au\/events-folder\/workshops-seminars-and-training\/seminar-series\/resul-cesur,-university-of-connecticut\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">seminar<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on the research in June at the University of Melbourne in Australia. The study drew news <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/opioid-epidemic-affects-combat-veterans-more-than-civilians\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">coverage<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> from the Washington Examiner, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/heres-how-much-the-war-on-terror-contributed-to-americas-opioid-crisis-2019-09-18\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Market Watch<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and a mention in the Wall Street Journal\u2019s <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/economics\/2019\/09\/18\/newsletter-fed-jumps-into-markets-saudis-restore-some-production-the-army-is-looking-for-a-few-more-good-men\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">newsletter<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on the economy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cesur says the major finding is that combat service causes a seven-percentage-point difference in the likelihood of military personnel abusing opioids.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example: If in a given sample, one in 100 members of the military who were not deployed to combat became addicted to opioids, it\u2019s estimated that eight members of the military who were deployed to combat would become addicted\u00a0 \u2014 strictly due to the combat exposure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cCombat deployments have a severe effect on the likelihood of injury, which is obvious, and also it has a severe effect on mental health. So, we are not that surprised\u201d that combat service would cause higher rates of opioid abuse, Cesur says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cBut we also try to understand the mechanisms. Our work suggests that combat injuries and also psychological stress like PTSD (post-traumatic stress syndrome) due to combat are the reasons behind it. The biggest conclusion from our work is that it\u2019s not simply because these people would abuse opioids even if they didn\u2019t enlist; quite the contrary. The opioid epidemic in the U.S. military has a lot to do with what servicemembers went through in combat zones.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Other key findings include:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Combat deployments increase opioid abuse because they are used to treat war injuries, but also because of PTSD and the mental health effects of exposure to battlefield trauma.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The theatre of war increases the likelihood of abuse of opioids with other antidepressants, such as benzodiazepines, which increases the risk of overdose and death.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The study does note progress in addressing the abuse problem: Since 2012, the rate of opioid prescribing by the Veterans Administration has fallen by over 40 percent.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Combat service significantly increases the likelihood of opioid abuse among military personnel, a study led by a UConn researcher has found. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":155224,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1715,2231,2076,1862,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[175],"class_list":["post-154963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-impact","category-health-well-being","category-research","category-busn","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 22:08:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154963"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155223,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154963\/revisions\/155223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/155224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154963"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=154963"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=154963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}