Policy Currents | The newsletter for policy people
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** March 18, 2025
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Reducing Deaths from Fentanyl and Other Illicit Opioids
Nearly 87,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in the 12 months ending in September 2024. While that's down from 114,000 such deaths one year earlier, overdose remains the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 44.
RAND's David Luckey helped lead a recent research effort on how to address the opioid crisis and reduce its death toll. In a new Q&A, he discusses insights from that research, including how to better combat synthetic opioid trafficking (a stated priority of the new Trump administration), how overdoses affect individuals and families, and what a "whole-of-nation" approach to addressing the crisis might look like.
"This is a pervasive problem," Luckey says. "It affects all elements of our society. It's a health problem, a law enforcement problem, a national security problem. No single action is going to solve it."
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Cost Asymmetry in Warfare
Amid conflicts in Ukraine, Israel, and the Red Sea, million-dollar missiles are regularly intercepting cheap commercial drones. This reveals a growing trend in tactical warfare: It's cheap to attack and expensive to defend. Militaries are seeking ways to tip the economic calculus back in the defender's favor, says RAND Europe's James Black. For example, they're expanding electronic warfare capabilities and experimenting with high-powered lasers and microwave weapons. But ultimately, there's no silver-bullet solution, Black says. "The United States and Europe must work together urgently to build a broader toolkit of defensive options."
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Why Is India Quietly Boosting Ties with the Taliban?
The Taliban's reconquest of Afghanistan following the U.S. military's withdrawal in 2021 led to serious concerns for India. New Delhi no longer had a friendly Afghan government in place, and its top rivals, China and Pakistan, have since been trying to fill the power vacuum. For these reasons and others, India has been quietly reestablishing and elevating ties with the Taliban. Writing in Nikkei Asia, RAND's Derek Grossman says it's unclear whether this approach has paid off yet, but the strategy "makes good sense because it gives India a fighting chance to succeed with Afghanistan."
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** RAND Recommends
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- On NPR's All Things Considered, RAND's Samuel Charap discusses the Trump administration's strategy to end the war in Ukraine. "Talking is not a gift," he says. "It's a way of getting things done."
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- Researchers from RAND Europe say the UK government should focus on one key question as it seeks to reform the National Health Service: What can be done to build a health and care service that has innovation at its core?
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- On the Inside the IC podcast, RAND's Cortney Weinbaum explains why all intelligence officers have an ethical responsibility to choose the most appropriate tools and methods--collectively called "tradecraft."
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** Events
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Policy Lab: Why AI Projects Fail
Wednesday, March 26, 2025 (Online)
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Applications are open for Pardee RAND Graduate School's new Master of National Security Policy degree program. Full-time and part-time schedules are available at our campuses in Santa Monica, CA, and Arlington, VA.
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