Last month, a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that combat troops were at a higher risk of abusing heroin and prescription opioids, concluding that these service members 7 percent more likely to abuse these drugs than those who were deployed but never engaged in combat.
According to an article published by Fox News, “The authors also noted that heroin use among the same group of veterans was 1 percentage point higher than those who didn’t see action. Resul Cesur, associate professor of healthcare economics at the University of Connecticut, told Military Times he and his colleagues wanted to understand the relationship between nearly two decades of war with veterans and the opioid crisis…Cesar noted about a third of opioid abuse among the military and veteran communities stems from injuries suffered during war. Nearly 58 percent of heroin abuse was also linked to war injury, they found. Many veterans have been prescribed opioids upon being discharged from a hospital and many continued to take them for a prolonged period, the study concluded.”
In 2015 the Department of Veterans Affairs reported a 55 percent increase in the use of opioids by Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. Almost 6,500 hundred veterans between 2010 and 2016 in the VA health care system died of opioid-related causes. The VA stated that the treated around 68,000 veterans for opioid addiction in 2016.
Among active military members, The Army and Marine Corps had the highest rates of heroin use, followed by the Navy and Air Force. Although drug use in the military is still quite rare, the Army and Marine Corps had the highest rates of heroin use followed by the Navy and Air Force.
To learn more about this important study, click HERE.
Relevant pages: Veterans Disability