OPIOID ANALGESICS AND HEROIN: EXAMINING DRUG ABUSE TRENDS AMONG A SAMPLE OF DRUG TREATMENT

In an effort to mitigate Kentucky’s prescription drug abuse, legislative intervention efforts were introduced in 2012 (i.e., HB 1) and 2013 (i.e., HB 217, amended version of HB 1). This study describes temporal and geographic trends of reported drug abuse among individuals in state-funded treatment in Kentucky between FY2010 and FY2013.The focus of this paper is primarily on opioid analgesics and heroin and the relationship of abuse patterns of these drugs to state drug policy initiatives. A linear regression was utilized to analyze overall drug abuse changes over time, which includes multiple year-to-year rates. Also, projection drug abuse rates were examined by applying an Exponential Smoohing (ETS) algorithm to the existing time-based data. Findings suggest that HB 217 may have influenced significant reductions in the prevalence of opioid analgesic abuse, as overall rates of abuse declined from FY2010 to FY2013. Heroin abuse rates significantly increased over this same time frame, suggesting there may be a transition from opioids to heroin among this sample. Projection rates indicate that by the year 2018, opioid and heroin abuse may be nearly equal; thereby, the difference margin of abuse between each drug by 2018 is approximately 5.81% (82.32% decrease). The finding of rising heroin abuse suggests a need for policy initiatives like SB 192 (2015), but the effectiveness (i.e., decreasing heroin abuse) of this policy remains unclear. Understanding trends may help to guide future policy efforts and guide pain management treatment strategies to where they might have their greatest impact.