We show that the War on Drugs launched by the Mexican President Felipe Calderón in 2007 pushed drug cartels into large-scale oil thefts. Municipalities that the presidential candidate’s party barely won at the local elections in 2007-2009 exhibit a larger increase in illegal oil taps over the...

There have been more than 500,000 opioid overdose deaths since 2000. To analyze the opioid epidemic, we construct a model where individuals, with and without pain, choose whether to misuse opioids knowing the probabilities of addiction and dying. These odds are functions of opioid use. Markov...

Greek-letter student social groups, better known as fraternities and sororities, are a ubiquitous feature on many American higher education campuses. These organizations, especially fraternities, have a reputation for encouraging unruly and improper behavior among both members and non-members....

We investigate behavioral responses to a staggered disruption in the supply of prescription opioids across U.S. states: the introduction of electronic Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs). Using administrative datasets, we find PDMPs curtail the proliferation of prescription opioids....

Incarceration is a crucial part of the scholarly analysis of crime, but what happens inside penal institutions largely remains a 'black box' (Western, 2021). This paper studies the impact of the new psychoactive substances (NPS) epidemic within prisons. NPS are powerful addictive chemical...

This study examines the effects of U.S. state-level marijuana policies on mental health. Using data from three nationally representative data sets and estimating difference-in-differences models that account for the staggered implementation of both medical and recreational marijuana legislation,...

We study how NAFTA changed the geography of violence in Mexico. We propose that this open border policy increased trafficking profits of Mexican cartels, resulting in violent competition among them. We test this hypothesis by comparing changes in drug-related homicides after NAFTA's introduction...

This study examines the effects of U.S. state-level marijuana policies on mental health. Using data from three nationally representative data sets and estimating difference-in-differences models that account for the staggered implementation of both medical and recreational marijuana legislation,...

We study how NAFTA changed the geography of violence in Mexico. We propose that this open border policy increased trafficking profits of Mexican cartels, resulting in violent competition among them. We test this hypothesis by comparing changes in drug-related homicides after NAFTA's introduction...

This paper used publicly available data, such as the analysis of 103 court cases to make a profile of those convicted for cannabis cultivation in Albania. There are multiple reports on drugs and organized crime in Albania which provide information on the seizures of illicit substances, law...

We examine the impact of the drug crisis that has unfolded over the last three decades in the United States on children’s living arrangements and environments. Because the current living arrangement could be a result of events that occurred at any point in a child’s life, we measure...

Ayurveda medicine system has a strong background in Indian culture. Modernized practices derived from Ayurvedic culture is used as alternative medicine in the field of Ayurveda. In this system of medicine, there is a belief that, through Ayurveda protocols, any substance can be changed into...

A growing literature has examined how mandatory access prescription drug monitoring programs (MA PDMPs), laws that require providers to consider a patient's prescription history before prescribing controlled substances, affect opioid-related outcomes. However, little is known about their impact...

Background: Well-functioning competitive markets are key to controlling generic drug prices. This is important since over 90% of all drugs sold in the US are generics. Recently, there have been examples of large price increases in the generic market. Methods: This paper examines price...

Metabolic conversion of drugs to chemically reactive products, known as bioactivation, is considered to underlie the adverse drug reactions such as idiosyncratic hepatotoxicity. As bioactivation of most drugs involves phase I oxidation, UV-induced TiO 2 photocatalytic oxidation (UV/TiO 2 -PCO)...

Pharmaceutical drug analysis (PDA), besides quantifying drugs and related substances (RS), can enrich drug discovery (DD) by suggesting new leads. PDA may be extended towards comparative in-silico predictions for drugs and RS. This may lead to the assessment of drug likeliness of nontoxic RS as...

The benefits of multi-target drugs in oncotherapy are often hindered by their multi-target nature and tissue-nonspecific distribution. To maximize the multi-target antitumor potency with reduced side effects, we proposed a ROS/pH-dual responsive nanosystem (DP) constructed from biocompatible...

Conditional on a set population of opioid-dependents, opioid fatalities are a function of the total quantity available and the ease of accessing that quantity. While other studies examine policy changes affecting aggregate supply, I focus on the effects of easing access by changing the trade...

This paper presents a model of prosecutors' decision-making processes in which prosecutors (both federal and state) internalize some of the benefits of reducing crime, but also care about developing their own human capital. Since U.S. attorneys make their decision first, they have the...

We show that the War on Drugs launched by the Mexican President Felipe Calderón in 2007 pushed drug cartels into large-scale oil thefts. Municipalities that the presidential candidate’s party barely won at the local elections in 2007-2009 exhibit a larger increase in illegal oil taps over the...

We investigate behavioral responses to a staggered disruption in the supply of prescription opioids across U.S. states: the introduction of electronic Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs). Using administrative datasets, we find PDMPs curtail the proliferation of prescription opioids....

In this paper, I study the role of payday loan restrictions on suicide and overdose deaths. Payday lenders offer ``quick cash'' and charge high fees relative to the principle loan amounts. Concerns about payday loans trapping borrowers in debt have led 21 U.S. states and the District of Columbia...

In the current legal landscape, it is possible to craft policy that combats drug abuse and drug harms, protects human rights, and complies with international drug control law in good faith, by regulating the recreational uses of cannabis products rather than outlawing them. This essay proposes...

As part of a Nixon-era set of reforms, the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) was not intended to be a harsh, punitive approach but in the intervening years, the CSA lost its original purpose as political winds changed in ways that focused more on punitive approaches to drug control. Moreover, the...

The COVID-19 pandemic caused increased drug use and a widespread decline in mental health throughout American society. Yet, despite the unprecedented pandemic, society as a whole has shown an impressive ability to adapt to new ways of living, suggesting that a dramatically different version of...

Marijuana prohibition ended in Canada in 2018 when marijuana was legalized at the federal level. Marijuana prohibition in the United States has de factor ended in a large percentage of states as marijuana has been legalized at the state level (even while it remains illegal under federal law)....

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the effects of heroin prices, cocaine prices and marijuana decriminalization on the demand for these three drugs, respectively. There are few prior empirical studies in this area because data have been difficult to acquire. This paper makes use of newly...

We show that legal opacity is a strong factor in drug trafficking. We develop a new framework that illustrates how legal opacity influences countries' seizure rates. Legal opacity reduces the detection of illicit flows and increases their volumes because it lowers trafficking costs. We use...

Thirty-six states have legalized medical marijuana and 14 states have legalized the use of marijuana for recreational purposes. In this paper, we review the literature on the public health consequences of legalizing marijuana, focusing on studies that have appeared in economics journals as well...

Empirical evidence for the U.S. suggests that illicit consumption of opioids increases in association with socio-economic deprivation of the middle-class. To explore the underlying mechanisms, we set up a task-based labor market model with endogenous mental health status and a health care...

Greek-letter student social groups, better known as fraternities and sororities, are a ubiquitous feature on many American higher education campuses. These organizations, especially fraternities, have a reputation for encouraging unruly and improper behavior among both members and non-members....