Criminal Activity or Treatable Health Condition? News Media Framing of Opioid Analgesic Abuse in the United States, 1998-2012
OBJECTIVE:
Opioid
analgesic abuse is a complex and relatively new public health problem, and to
date little is known about how the news media frame the issue.
METHODS:
To better
understand how this issue has been framed in public discourse, an analysis was
conducted of the volume and content of news media coverage of opioid analgesic
abuse over a 15-year period from 1998 to 2012 (N=673 news stories). A 70-item
structured coding instrument was used to measure items in four domains that
prior research suggests can influence public attitudes about health and social
issues: causes, solutions, and consequences of the problem and individual
depictions of persons who abuse opioid analgesics.
RESULTS:
Although
experts have deemed opioid analgesic abuse a public health crisis, results of
our study suggest that the news media more often frame the problem as a
criminal justice issue. The most frequently mentioned cause of the problem was
illegal drug dealing, and the most frequently mentioned solutions were law
enforcement solutions designed to arrest and prosecute the individuals
responsible for diverting opioid analgesics onto the illegal market.
Prevention-oriented approaches, such as prescription drug-monitoring programs,
were mentioned more frequently in the latter years of the study period, but
less than 5% of news stories overall mentioned expanding substance abuse
treatment, and even fewer mentioned expanding access to evidence-based
medication-assisted treatments, such as buprenorphine.
CONCLUSIONS:
Findings
underscore the need for a concerted effort to reframe opioid analgesic abuse as
a treatable condition addressable via well-established public and behavioral
health approaches.
- 1Dr. McGinty, Dr. Kennedy-Hendricks, Dr. Baller, and Dr. Barry are with the Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore (e-mail: bmcginty@jhu.edu ). Dr. McGinty and Dr. Barry are also with the Department of Mental Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore. Dr. Niederdeppe is with the Department of Communication, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Dr. Gollust is with the Division of Health Policy and Management, University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Minneapolis.
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