The effect of the drug abuse prevention programs on intimate partner abuse and child maltreatment

Drug control policies improve social welfare by curbing substance abuse or overdose. However, some of their potential unintended consequences, like the effects on drug-related crimes, remain underexplored. For instance, the existing literature has not established any causal relationships between those policies and domestic violence. As one of the largest state-level policies, the Mandatory Access (MA) Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) have been shown to be effective at decreasing opioid use. This paper is the first to causally examine whether MA PDMPs impact the prevalence of intimate partner violence. Additionally, it complements the current literature by examining its effects on multiple types of child maltreatment crimes. I employ a difference-in-differences model on victim-level crime data and find that MA PDMPs significantly decrease intimate partner assaults as well as children involved in assault and intimidation. The results are robust under multiple robustness checks