The effect of combat deployments on veteran opioid abuse
利用海外部署分配的准实验，估计了全球反恐战争中战斗暴露对现役军人阿片类药物滥用的因果影响，发现战斗暴露显著增加了处方止痛药滥用和海洛因使用的风险，并带来了高昂的医疗成本。
Grim national statistics about the U.S. opioid crisis are increasingly well known to the American public. Far less well known is that U.S. servicemembers are at ground zero of the epidemic, with veterans facing an overdose death rate of up to twice that of civilians. Exploiting a quasi-experiment in overseas deployment assignment, this study estimates the causal impact of combat exposure among the deployed in the Global War on Terrorism on opioid abuse. We find that exposure to war theater substantially increased the risk of prescription painkiller abuse and illicit heroin use among active duty servicemen. The magnitudes of our estimates imply lower-bound combat exposure-induced healthcare costs of $1.04 billion per year for prescription painkiller abuse and $470 million per year for heroin use.