著者

阪田 麻紀

出版者

北海道大学大学院国際広報メディア・観光学院

雑誌

国際広報メディア・観光学ジャーナル

巻号頁・発行日

vol.32, pp.3-21, 2021-04-22

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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.