Carolina Arteaga's 'Ingenious' Research on the Opioid Crisis Featured in The New Yorker and Le Monde
Together with Victoria Barone, FOS Affiliate Carolina Arteaga explores how opioid marketing amplified economic and political divides in the U.S.
Le Monde
In the United States, Republicans Are the Major Political Winners of the Opioid Crisis
How do major public health crises change the economic and political landscape? This was the question addressed in late January by a study conducted by economists Carolina Arteaga and Victoria Barone (“Republican Support and Economic Hardship: The Enduring Effects of the Opioid Epidemic,” University of Toronto) in the context of the most devastating health crisis in US history, the opioid epidemic.
The New Yorker
Did the Opioid Epidemic Fuel Donald Trump’s Return to the White House?
When I spoke with Arteaga and Barone, via Zoom, on Thursday afternoon, Arteaga said, “It was not obvious that the opioid epidemic would favor the Republicans.” In surveys through the years, people did not especially blame either party for the epidemic. Even so, she thought there might be two reasons that the most affected areas had tilted so clearly to the G.O.P. “The first,” she said, “and I don’t think this would have happened without trade, was that the economic hardship of mostly white working-class Americans became something that was very important to the Republican Party.” The second reason was simpler. “Conservative media talked about this more,” Arteaga said.