CAPITALI$M 101

Reduction in costs of fentanyl production found to have long-term implications for illegal opioid supply industry

LEGALIZE DRUGS!

Analysis also explores repercussions for law enforcement

Carnegie Mellon University

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The spread of illegally manufactured fentanyl has driven overdose deaths to unprecedented levels in the United States and Canada. It has also changed the production function for drug traffickers, most notably by radically reducing the costs of raw materials for those producing illegal opioids.

In a new analysis, researchers explored the possible consequences of that reduction in costs through the eyes of those who make up the drug supply chain. The authors summarize potential long-term implications for the structure, conduct, and performance of the illegal opioid supply industry, as well as potential consequences for drug law enforcement organizations. 

The analysis was conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the University at Albany, the University of Arizona, and the University of Maryland. It is published in Global Crime.

The United States has had a substantial illegal opioid market for more than 50 years. Starting around 2000, a rise in prescriptions for opioids for pain management led to an additional market in diverted prescription opioids. And around 2015, illegally manufactured fentanyl entered the market, which spurred continued increases in fatal drug overdoses.

“Although there has been much research on these changes, few studies have considered the motivations for the rise in fentanyl from the perspective of the illegal drug traffickers,” says Jonathan P. Caulkins, professor of operations research and public policy at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College, the lead author.

The analysis begins by asking how fentanyl, a cheap, synthetic opioid, might affect supply and demand in a market previously dominated by heroin, a plant-based, semi-synthetic product that in North America is more expensive, less potent, and less lethal than fentanyl.

Fentanyl is much cheaper to produce than heroin, generating a supply shock in the market for illegal opioids that may have implications beyond the standard prediction that prices will drop and consumption will increase. In their analysis, the authors describe the shock of cheap production, showing why this might lead to proportionately smaller reductions in the retail price than in the import price of illegal opioids. Then they consider the implications for illegal opioid suppliers and supply, relying on knowledge about the idiosyncrasies of illegal drug markets.

The authors then assess effects on the demand side of the market; given the demand elasticities for illegal opioids, price reductions lead to only modest declines in expenditures and thus also in drug-related income-generating crime. They also consider possible implications for the ability of law enforcement to affect the market, addressing why high-level seizures of fentanyl become even less relevant than when heroin was the principal illegal opioid. Among the authors’ conclusions:
 

• The implications of fentanyl’s lower cost will be larger in Mexico’s high-level markets than in U.S. retail markets because the cost of the drug represents a smaller part of the cost of supply in U.S. retail markets. Hence, the market shift toward fentanyl may have less pronounced effects on crime, violence, and criminal incomes in the United States than on economic outcomes in Mexico.
• That asymmetric impact has implications for high-level interdiction and drug enforcement: Seizures at higher market levels are less valuable to law enforcement precisely because drugs are less costly for traffickers to replace.
• In Mexico, the shift to synthetic fentanyl represents a major loss of income for farmers who grew poppies.
• The health implications in the United States are enormous, with significantly increased rates of overdose.
• The spread of fentanyl has also led to changes in domestic markets beyond a drop in price, including more frequent adulteration of illegal opioids with other dangerous substances and the spread of counterfeit pills containing fentanyl. In addition, fentanyl has made the prospect of using illegal drugs scarier for drug consumers.

“In our analysis, we walk through potential implications for both the supply side and the demand side of the market,” notes Shawn D. Bushway, professor of public administration at University at Albany, who coauthored the article. “We believe our work is the first explicit economic analysis of potential effects of fentanyl on the illegal market for opioids.”

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Journal

Global Crime

DOI

10.1080/17440572.2025.2561658 

Article Title

Possible effects of cheap fentanyl on drug markets, use and harm: a theoretical analysis

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Sleep trap: Many young adults use cannabis to fall asleep

University of Michigan

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Image of a marijuana joint being rolled          

 

More than 1 in 5 young adults reported using cannabis or alcohol to help them fall asleep.

 

According to new findings from the University of Michigan's annual Monitoring the Future Panel Study, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 22% of U.S. young adults aged 19 to 30 reported using one or both of these substances to sleep. 

 

Cannabis was far more common than alcohol for this purpose: 18% said they used cannabis to sleep, compared to 7% who used alcohol to sleep. Among those who had used any cannabis in the past year, 41% said they did so specifically to initiate sleep.

 

"Using these substances to get to sleep can backfire because they can interfere with the ability to stay asleep and with the quality of sleep," said Megan Patrick, research professor at the Institute for Social Research and principal investigator of the MTF Panel Study. "They appear to actually disrupt sleep in the long term. The fact that so many young adults reported that they use cannabis to sleep is alarming."

 

Published in JAMA Pediatrics, the study analyzed data from 1,473 young U.S. adults and found gender and racial disparities in the use of these substances to sleep:

 

• Women were nearly twice as likely as men to use cannabis to help them get to sleep.

• Participants identifying as another gender were more than four times as likely as men to do so.

• Black young adults were three times as likely as white peers to use alcohol for sleep.

 

"Long-term, regular use of these substances to get to sleep may lead to worse sleep problems and increased risk for substance use disorder," Patrick said. "For example, frequently using a substance to get to sleep may lead to tolerance, or needing more of it to get the same effect. In other words, rather than resulting in better sleep, it may lead to additional sleep problems and escalating substance use."

 

The research is one of the first national examinations of how and why young adults use substances to manage sleep. The MTF Panel Study annually tracks substance use trends among nationally representative samples of U.S. students followed into adulthood.

 

"Unfortunately, there is a misconception that substance use can be helpful for sleep problems, but it can make things worse," Patrick said. "High-quality sleep is critical for mental health and regulating mood. Young adults told us that they are using cannabis to try to get to sleep, but doing so may make their sleep problems even worse. They need to know the potential risks."

 

Given the high co-occurrence of substance use and sleep problems in young adults, clinicians should be aware of this issue. The findings emphasize the necessity of effective, integrated screening and interventions. 

 

"Health care providers should understand how common both sleep problems and substance use are during young adulthood," Patrick said. "And that many young adults are using cannabis specifically to get to sleep. People who are trying to manage sleep problems should talk to their doctors or other providers." 

 

The study's authors also included Yuk Pang and Yvonne Terry-McElrath of U-M's Institute for Social Research. 

 

Study: Cannabis and Alcohol Use to Initiate Sleep Among Young Adults (DOI: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2025.3642) 

 

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Journal

JAMA Pediatrics

DOI

10.1001/jamapediatrics.2025.3642 

 

In the face of extreme weather events’ devastating effects on power grids, study identifies vulnerabilities that drive prolonged outages, suggests ways to reduce disruptions

Carnegie Mellon University

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Extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, winter storms, and tornadoes, have become a major cause of large-scale electric power outages in recent years, causing billions of dollars in losses. In a new study, researchers analyzed power outage data and corresponding weather records from several major service territories on the east coast of the United States. They found that excessive weather stress and planning vulnerabilities at specific grid nodes are key drivers of prolonged local outages, which spread to the whole system. The authors use their findings to suggest ways to reduce customer outages.

The study was conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Moonshot for Electric Grid, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Maryland, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It was published in the INFORMS Journal on Data Science.

“Resilience—the capability of withstanding, adapting to, and recovering from a large-scale disruption—has become a top priority for the power sector,” explains Shixiang (Woody) Zhu, assistant professor of data analytics at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College, who led the study. “But a system-level understanding of power grid resilience remains limited, despite the importance of accurately assessing this capability.”

After extensive losses as a result of extreme weather in the early 2000s, U.S. regulatory entities at different levels asked the industry to investigate the resilience of the power grid and adopt measures against extreme weather. But for a variety of reasons, identifying the key factors that contribute to the massive blackouts has long been a very complicated problem.

In this study, researchers used a spatio-temporal model and adopted a data-driven approach to analyze quarter-hourly, customer-level power outage data and corresponding weather records in Georgia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

They defined power grid resilience as infrastructural resistance to extreme weather and operational recoverability from such damages. Their model captures three important factors of infrastructural resistance that are closely tied to large-scale power outages: planning vulnerability, maintenance sufficiency, and criticality.

The researchers’ model suggests that local power outages directly induced by extreme weather were a non-linear response to the accumulation of weather effects and caused subsequent large-scale and long-term blackouts by spreading failures through some critical nodes in power networks. Simulations showed that targeted interventions, such as isolating critical nodes and protecting vulnerable nodes from transient faults, could reduce customer outages by 45.5% and 49.5%, respectively. Among the study’s additional findings:

• Outage rates in metropolitan or economically strong areas were generally lower due to less vegetation, more underground or steel-structure-supported power lines, and adequate repair resources. Thus, the electricity infrastructures in those areas are less vulnerable to extreme weather events and more recoverable if damage to an infrastructure occurs.
   
• In contrast, rural areas, especially those with terrains like mountains, forests, rivers, and deserts, were hard to access and locate a fault, which inevitably delayed recovery from outages. Also, those economically weak areas usually lacked the resources to maintain or upgrade their electricity infrastructures, which became increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather events, resulting in relatively high outage rates.
   
• The direction (from source to target) of the spread of an outage typically followed the direction in which power flowed: An area with large-generation capacity or dense transmission network facilities (e.g., substations) was probably a hub of outage propagation. Such an area was more likely a mid-sized urban area, which could be developed to host several transmission or generation facilities, but was not a big load center that dominantly attracted power flows.

“Our study suggests there are planning and operational measures that can prevent and mitigate weather-induced power outages,” says Feng Qiu from Argonne National Lab, who coauthored the study. “Among these is reducing the interdependency of power grids by improving their operational flexibility and embracing diversified sources with distributed locations and versatile operation schemes.”

Insights such as these, the authors say, can inform strategies for decision makers to enhance grid resilience and reduce the likelihood of future disruptions.

 

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Journal

INFORMS Journal on Data Science

DOI

10.1287/ijds.2023.0017 

Article Title

Quantifying Grid Resilience Against Extreme Weather Using Large-Scale Customer Power Outage Data

Article Publication Date

18-Sep-2025

 

Household dryers are significant sources of microfiber pollution, study finds

DRI scientists and Keep Tahoe Blue partnered with community volunteers for the research

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Desert Research Institute

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image: 

A microscope image of colorful microfibers.

view more 

Credit: NOAA/Sherri Mason via https://blog.marinedebris.noaa.gov/new-report-microfiber-pollution-released

Reno, Nev. (Oct. 15, 2025) – The fabrics that fill our homes, from natural cotton towels and bedsheets, to clothes produced with synthetic materials, produce microscopic fibers as they break down over time. Previous research has shown that household washers collect and release these microfibers into the environment, and now a new study uses citizen science to demonstrate how dryer vents also produce microfibers under normal household use.  

The research, published September 3rd in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, estimates that household dryers are releasing more than 3,500 metric tons of microfibers each year in the U.S. alone (about 30 times the weight of the Statue of Liberty). DRI scientists partnered with the environmental nonprofit Keep Tahoe Blue to recruit volunteers from the Lake Tahoe region for the study. Volunteers installed a mesh catchment system on the outside of their home dryer vents for three weeks and reported information on the materials in each dryer load. The results demonstrated that household dryers are significant sources of both naturally-derived (for example, cotton) and synthetic microfibers, both of which can carry the chemicals and dyes used to treat them into the environment.  

“This study expands our understanding of how textiles are breaking down under typical household conditions,” said Monica Arienzo, Director of DRI’s Microplastics and Environmental Chemistry Lab and lead author of the research. “Because of the ubiquity of microfibers and their ability to contribute other chemicals to the environment, it’s important for us to understand ways to reduce microfibers at the source. Household dryers could be one simple place to address them.”  

Synthetic fabrics like polyester, nylon, and spandex break down into microplastics over time, and made up more than half of global fabric production in 2023. Both synthetic and natural fibers like cotton, wool, and silk can be treated with dyes, flame retardants, PFAS chemicals for water repellency, and formaldehyde for wrinkle-free fabrics. Scientists are still in the beginning stages of investigating the environmental and human health impacts of these chemicals, which include developmental and reproductive health effects.  

The washing and drying processes both produce microfibers, with washers introducing them into wastewater and dryers releasing them into the air. Most dryers in the U.S. are tumble dryers which vent hot air outside of the building, and which have no filter to catch microfibers after the lint filter. Other dryer types, such as condenser and heat pump dryers, are more common outside of the U.S. and may have different emissions.  

Six volunteers installed mesh covers over their dryer vents for the research. They submitted relevant information about the materials being dried through the Citizen Science Tahoe smartphone app, which includes a range of other citizen science projects that allow the public to contribute to environmental research in the Lake Tahoe region. The volunteers mailed the mesh covers back to DRI for analysis, where Arienzo and her team recorded the full weight of each and then analyzed their chemical compositions. A total of 76 dryer loads were recorded during the study period, with another 38 recorded for households that did not install the mesh covers. For each dryer load, the two largest items and their materials were reported, with towels, pants, and sheets as the most common largest items. The most common materials reported were cotton and polyester or fleece. Microfibers from natural fibers like cotton were more prevalent on the dryer vent mesh covers than those from synthetic fibers.  

The amount of microfiber material on each dryer mesh varied widely, which is likely the result of variations in dryer model, age, and fabric condition. With more than 82 million electric dryers in the U.S. and the reported dryer use from the study volunteers, the researchers estimate that 3,543 metric tons of microfibers are released each year nationwide. Based on their analysis of the dryer vent mesh covers, they estimate that 2,728 metric tons are from natural fabrics while 460 metric tons are from synthetic fabrics.  

“This volunteer-fueled research adds to our knowledge of pollution sources, like dryer vents, which can impact the ecosystems we cherish and depend on,” said Marilee Movius, Sustainable Recreation Manager for Keep Tahoe Blue. “It also shows us how small behavioral changes—such as installing more efficient lint filters or air drying our clothes—can reduce microfiber emissions and protect the natural environment, Lake Tahoe, and ourselves.”  

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More information: The full study, A participatory science approach to quantify microfiber emissions from clothes dryers, is available from Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry at https://doi.org/10.1093/etojnl/vgaf222 

For more information about microfiber pollution, check out the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Fact Sheet: https://19january2021snapshot.epa.gov/sites/static/files/2020-07/documents/article_2_microfibers.pdf 

Study authors include: Monica Arienzo (DRI), Meghan Collins (DRI), Emily Justice Frey (Keep Tahoe Blue), Marilee Movius (Keep Tahoe Blue), Laura Patten (Keep Tahoe Blue), Angelique DePauw (DRI), and Rachel Kozloski (DRI) 

About DRI 

We are Nevada’s non-profit research institute, founded in 1959 to empower experts to focus on science that matters. We work with communities across the state — and the world — to address their most pressing scientific questions. We’re proud that our scientists continuously produce solutions that better human and environmental health.   

Scientists at DRI are encouraged to follow their research interests across the traditional boundaries of scientific fields, collaborating across DRI and with scientists worldwide. All faculty support their own research through grants, bringing in nearly $5 to the Nevada economy for every $1 of state funds received. With more than 600 scientists, engineers, students, and staff across our Reno and Las Vegas campuses, we conducted more than $52 million in sponsored research focused on improving peoples’ lives in 2024 alone. 

At DRI, science isn’t merely academic — it’s the key to future-proofing our communities and building a better world. For more information, please visit www.dri.edu. 

About Keep Tahoe Blue 

We are the donor-funded, science-based organization of environmental experts and Tahoe-lovers behind the movement to Keep Tahoe Blue. We have led the protection and restoration of the Lake Tahoe Basin since 1957 and continue to conserve the health of Tahoe for all, for generations to come. We use science to design innovative solutions, advocate with federal and state partners on behalf of the Lake, and engage thousands of volunteers as citizen scientists and stewards of Tahoe. Learn more, donate, and get involved at keeptahoeblue.org. 

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Journal

Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry

Article Title

A participatory science approach to quantify microfiber emissions from clothes dryers