open access

https://hdl.handle.net/2115/82414

Opioid Abuse Epidemic in the United States : Analysis from the point of view of Societal and Institutional Risk

日本語

2021-04-22

Graduate School of International Media, Communication, and Tourism Studies, Hokkaido University

The Journal of International Media, Communication, and Tourism Studies

32

3-21

Narcotic opioids, which have been prescribed as painkillers, have become so prevalent across the U.S. that today deaths from their abuse surpass traffic deaths. In 2017, President Donald Trump declared a public health emergency as the “opioid crisis” over the spike in deaths from opioid abuse, including overdose. This issue has developed into a major social problem since the 1990s due to a combination of factors. In this paper, the author analyzes the development of the opioid abuse epidemic in the U.S. — how it broke out, expanded, was responded to, re-expanded and was eventually recognized as a national crisis — using a risk colonization framework based on societal and institutional risks. The paper aims to understand the process of expansion and its contributing factors in a more objective and comparable way.

紀要論文

Version of Record

AA1224631X