The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report on three types of policy approaches to address the opioid crisis, explaining their effectiveness and likely budgetary effects.

Effectiveness:

• Reducing Supply: Limiting the availability of illegally produced opioids by disrupting the drug supply chain has been shown to reduce hospital admissions and overall mortality, but the effects are mostly temporary. Those findings are based on past interdiction efforts, however, and may not fully apply to the current crisis, fueled by synthetic drugs, because of differences in production and distribution.
• Reducing Demand: Treating and preventing opioid use disorder (OUD) is key to reducing demand for opioids. Enhancing the effectiveness of state prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) can help prevent OUD by reducing the use of prescription opioids and the amount of opioids dispensed to new users. Evidence suggests that increasing access to OUD treatment by, for example, expanding Medicaid coverage, expanding access to telehealth services, and supporting treatment for those involved in the criminal legal system, increases treatment and reduces opioid use and overdose rates.
• Harm Reduction: Expanding access to overdose reversal medications has been shown to reduce opioid overdose deaths, and the availability of those medications does not increase opioid use.

Budgetary impacts: Implementing any of those policy approaches would alter federal spending and, in some cases, revenues.

• Providing funding for grants and other programs would add to federal spending, and policies affecting federal health insurance programs would affect federal spending.
• But: To the extent that some policies improved health outcomes, spending on federal health insurance programs would fall because of reduced health care costs from averted medical needs. Increased longevity resulting from fewer overdose deaths would increase revenues through the collection of additional payroll and income taxes and would increase federal spending on Medicare, Social Security, and other federal programs.

Read more: The Opioid Crisis: Federal Policy Approaches to Reduce Supply, Demand, and Harm