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• Posted September 12, 2025

Inmates Less Likely To OD After Release If Provided Opioid Addiction Meds In Jail

County jail inmates who receive medication to treat their opioid addiction have a lower risk of overdose after their release, a new study reports.

They’re also significantly more likely to continue their addiction treatment, researchers reported Sept. 10 in The New England Journal of Medicine.

“These findings demonstrate the importance of providing medications to treat opioid use disorder in correctional settings,” Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said in a news release.

“Offering effective opioid treatment to people in jail is a critical step toward addressing the opioid crisis, promoting recovery, saving lives and reducing reincarceration,” added Volkow, whose agency funded the research. “It’s a win-win for public health.”

The opioid epidemic contributed to more than 80,000 deaths in 2024, and there tends to be a higher proportion of people with opioid abuse disorder in jail compared to the general population, researchers said in background notes.

Medications like buprenorphine, methadone and naltrexone are known to be effective in helping people break their opioid addiction, but they are available in only about 13% of U.S. jails, researchers said.

For this study, researchers analyzed data from 6,400 people with probable opioid use disorder incarcerated in seven Massachusetts county jails between September 2019 and December 2020.

In 2018, Massachusetts passed a law enacting a four-year pilot program to provide opioid addiction medications to inmates in these jails, researchers said.

About 42% of the inmates got medication to help treat their opioid addiction, researchers said.

Results showed that those who got anti-opioid medications in jail were 40% more likely to be actively engaged in addiction treatment six months after their release, compared to those who didn’t get the meds.

Those receiving addiction medications in jail also had a 52% lower risk of fatal opioid OD, 24% lower risk of non-fatal opioid OD, and 56% lower risk of death from any cause.

Finally, those who got medication treatment in jail were 12% less likely to be reincarcerated, researchers found.

“The Massachusetts initiative represents a model for how jails can play a vital role in addressing the opioid epidemic in the community,” lead researcher Dr. Peter Friedmann, an addiction medicine physician at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School in Boston, said in a news release.

Senior researcher Elizabeth Evans, a public health professor from University of Massachusetts-Amherst, agreed.

“Establishing these types of programs in local jails is a powerful and effective strategy for engaging and retaining people in treatment and reducing overdose deaths after release,” she added in a news release.

More information

The National Institute on Drug Abuse has more on medications for opioid use disorder.

SOURCE: National Institutes of Health, news release, Sept. 10, 2025