Quarterly insights from the RAND Drug Policy Research Center

Out-of-Pocket Cost of Naloxone May Keep Many Uninsured from Accessing It

The cost of buying the naloxone is out of reach for many uninsured Americans, a hurdle that may keep the medicine from saving more people who overdose on opioids. Read more »

Photo by VioletaStoimenova/Getty Images

How Policies That Punish Pregnant Women Backfire

There is overwhelming evidence and consensus from the medical and public health communities that supportive approaches are what help pregnant women with substance use disorders. Unfortunately, the overturning of Roe v. Wade has opened the door for more policies that punish women rather than evidence-based solutions that we know can, do, and will save lives. Read More »

New Simulation Tool for Assessing Concurrent Policies to Reduce Opioid Mortality

This online tool allows users to select from a range of simulation parameters to explore how different models perform and compare models by various performance metrics.

Explore the Tool »

Photo by Darren415/Getty Images

How Much Illegally Manufactured Fentanyl Could the U.S. Be Consuming?

It is unlikely that the annual consumption of illegally manufactured fentanyl in the U.S. could have been more than single digit pure metric tons in 2021. For comparison, the most recent best estimates of the amount of cocaine and heroin consumed in the U.S. are 145 and 47 pure metric tons, respectively.

Photo by mofles/Getty Images

New Book Provides a Harm Assessment Framework for Crime Policy

A new book published by Oxford University Press presents a "Harm Assessment Framework," consisting of tools and a process to identify, evaluate, and rank harms and to carefully distinguish between harms that result directly from activities and those that are remote or driven at least partially by policy.