Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

After years of reductions in the rate of murder and violent crime in the United States, the national murder rate increased in both 2015 and 2016. The causes of this trend are generally unknown, though there is some evidence in the literature that it is related to narcotic drugs. Arrests related to heroin-cocaine had been stable for years before a sudden increase in 2015. Likewise, the number of murders related to narcotic drugs has increased since 2013 with an especially large jump in 2015. These types of crime increases parallel recent dramatic growth in overdoses involving heroin and synthetic opioids, indicators of advancing illicit drug markets. However, the causal relationship between the recent opioid crisis and the rise in murder rates is missing from the literature. The study aims at ascertaining the presence of a causal link and understanding causal pathways.

We show that local areas hit hardest by the rise in heroin and fentanyl overdoses are also those that have been disproportionately affected by the increase in crime. Furthermore, we use the reformulation of OxyContin as an exogenous shock to illicit drug markets. OxyContin reformulation led people misusing OxyContin to switch to illicit opioids, and previous work has shown that areas with more people misusing OxyContin experienced faster growth in heroin and fentanyl overdoses. We test whether this growth in the illicit drug markets also caused an increase in crime.

We find that after reformulation, there are larger increases in murder rates in states with high pre-reformulation rates of OxyContin misuse. This relationship is strongest for white homicide victim rates. The results provide a causal link between the opioid epidemic and crime and show that the rise in murder rates was due to increased exposure of victims to risky environments, such as access to illicit drug markets. We are also able to provide some evidence of mechanisms by exploring whether the rise in crime is limited to people using drugs or people trafficking drugs. Alternatively, growth in illicit drug markets may spur increases in crime more generally. We separate out these potential mechanisms in our data.