Abstract
This paper reviews the governmental response to the Opioid Epidemic. The opioid epidemic is a crisis that has taken hundreds of thousands of American lives. The opioid epidemic is a systemic problem that will not be solved quickly or painlessly. Because of the depth of this crisis, it is crucial to understand what motivates legislators’ response. To potentially understand the future behavior of legislators, it is crucial to understand what has motivated their response to the crisis thus far. This paper does this by asking, why has legislative behavior varied in response to the opioid epidemic? It specifically examines the legislative response from the 115th session of the United States House of Representatives. It attempts to analyze legislative behavior on a series of bills to address the epidemic through a data driven approach. It uses data from Opensecrets.org, the National Institutes of Health, and the American Foundation for Aids Research to analyze the effects of variables on legislators’ votes. This study hopes to inform future analysis of legislative action and what motivates it.
How to Cite
Bobbitt, C. R., (2019) “The Opioid Crisis: America’s Longest Running Epidemic (1991-2018)”, Capstone, The UNC Asheville Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship 32(1), 5/1/2019.
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