US communities affected by the opioids crisis are offered worse deals on credit by banks, researchers with the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis find.

This disproportionately impacts Black, low-income, and young communities, say authors Sumit Agarwal, Wenli Li, Raluca Roman and Nonna Sorokina in the paper. The researchers say the real effects of this credit crunch are significant declines in consumer spending.

“Banks contract credit supply to consumers in counties highly exposed to opioid abuse by