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Synthetics now killing more people than prescription opioids, report says
Synthetic opioids such as fentanyl have overtaken prescription opioids as the No. 1 killer in the opioid epidemic, according to a new report.
The report, published Tuesday in the journal JAMA [DOI: 10.1001/jama.2018.2844] [DX], calculated the number and percentage of synthetic opioid-related overdose deaths in the United States between 2010 and 2016 using death certificates from the National Vital Statistics System. The researchers found that about 46% of the 42,249 opioid-related overdose deaths in 2016 involved synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, while 40% involved prescription drugs.
That's more than a three-fold increase in the presence of synthetic opioids from 2010, when synthetic drugs were involved in approximately 14% of opioid-overdose deaths.
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday May 02 2018, @04:24AM (11 children)
Who's saying that? I googled [google.com] the term in quotes and a previous post [google.com] by you, leftover, is the only and I do mean only reference to that particular quote. Maybe if you don't like that idea, then don't believe in it, right?
Moving on:
And yet there's a hell of a lot more nurturing of land and environment now than there was in the days when corporate greed was supposedly not so bad. In the US, which has Wall Street, we have more park acreage, stronger environmental laws, and a lot more municipal parks.
In other words, we have here the usual Chicken Little narrative. But in reality the US is doing as well as it ever has, with better care of environment and other factors you claim to care about.
So let me present some contrary factors for your consideration. What is more important to you: Protecting US labor or creating a more valuable labor force? Being able to afford a home or increasing the value of existing homes? Making it easy for people to enter a field of labor or to protect the wages of existing labor from competition? Honoring pension and health care benefits that the elder voted for themselves or the wages of the young (with young being anyone under retirement age)?
Opoid abuse is just the latest prescription drug abuse fad. Before that we had things like valium and steroids which were also massively abused (and heroin, opium, aspirin, etc before that). There's always been people lacking hope or wanting a little extra. Let us also keep in mind that the primary cause of lack of hope, inevitable death in a few decades due to aging, is still with us. I'd love to get rid of that particular socio-economic problem, but doesn't look to be in the cards during my lifetime.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday May 02 2018, @05:25AM (1 child)
People actually abused aspirin? Oh my God! I've been taking that shit since I was a wee tyke. Always patted myself on the back because I wasn't into hard drugs. Sure maybe I did some MaryJane in college and had a bit of beer and sometime binged on whisky and/or tequila and vodka...now into Zinfandel (now that's some heavy stuff), but I've always fallen back to aspirin---the sure hangover cure and soreness cure from too much hard labor, surfing, handball, city league basketball or hard core competitive sailing. I don't do it all the time but only when I think I need it....My god...I must be an aspirin addict!
On the other hand you do make a couple of good points. Especially the 4th paragraph. Good questions.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 02 2018, @05:52AM
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Wednesday May 02 2018, @06:17AM (2 children)
I recall that you have made posts with a similar theme before. It's definitely something to think about. Why do people feel like everything is going to shit, if quantitative measures (eg. violent crime) show the opposite of that? Maybe there are other factors to consider: levels of personal and public debt, inequality (perceived or actual), Orwellian surveillance and doublespeak, "if it bleeds it leads"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday May 02 2018, @07:46AM
For example, when you're having to compete for the same jobs with a variety of foreign workers who often worked for an order of magnitude less, that puts stress on you to do better than the alternatives. Often that didn't happen and that work ended up on distant shores. The baby boomer phenomenon also created a one-time economic windfall (growing wealth from real estate) that isn't easily duplicated.
The second point is that a vast number of political decisions serve to protect the interest of existing voters rather than invest in the future. For example, in areas with good economic conditions, there is a universal trend towards protection of existing real estate over creation of more. Homes in particular have grown so expensive that they inadvertently serve to exclude the less well-off from the better economic areas. When we create a system where the home becomes a store of value, perpetually increasing in value via policy and contrived economics, we create a situation where it becomes very expensive to live in a home.
If I want to move to a place with better work opportunities, odds are good that I'll have to pay a lot more for my housing, even if I rent instead of buying a home. That's a big obstacle to economic migration in the US.
Similarly, there have been many, many schemes at the state and local levels to license businesses and occupations. Where the licensing isn't onerous, this can result in better quality. But where it is onerous, it results in rent seeking protectionism where whole sectors of commerce are protected from competition to the detriment of everyone else.
In a typical two-parent family where both parents work, if one parent works in a restricted sector (for example, K-12 education) where crossing state lines can result in substantial training or licensing requirements in order to preserve the ability to work, then that becomes yet another an obstacle to migration to better locales. You get stories like where one parent has to turn down a nice job because the other parent can't get work there.
Finally, there's plenty of examples of short-sighted decisions about future generations who can't vote yet. Not much point to a pension system like Social Security that delivers less value than it soaks up in taxes for people younger than about 60. Or the world famous, inflated US health care. Or all the usual political messes that go on.
The third point is an important one. Sometimes people don't know any better. Information can cure that usually. But sometimes they perceive things a certain way because they are invested in that viewpoint. It can be really hard to convince someone when they really want to believe in a false story. I believe this is a large part of the problem, that people want to believe that things are getting worse, that greed or evil is ascendant, etc in order that they may be the savior of their story. So what should we do about these negative perceptions of our world when many of them are merely acting out private or ideological stories that don't have much to do with us? With that, I focus on the weak spots of those stories. Maybe they have an obsession to defend the acts of the current Venezuelan government. Maybe they have to insist that any Muslim migrant is guilty of genocide or other hideous crimes. At some point, you can get them into one or more untenable positions where they have to advocate some monumentally irrational or diabolical act to defend their narratives. That's when you get them.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @04:17PM
As someone who left my home region because of the economy - it's because "quantitative measures" are usually averages across the entire nation, and by population. Most of the population lives in very small dots on the map, so unless you live in one of those dots it's not going to reflect your own reality.
Just as my personal example... saying "Look! The economy is great because unemployment is 4%!" means nothing to the place I grew up because unemployment is actually between 8-10% unless you drive 100 miles. Everyone you see and interact with on a regular basis doesn't live in a place where unemployment is 4%. We don't have violent crime as a problem, so why would we care if it's going down from 2 instances per year to 1? When it's that low it's just noise, it means nothing.
I don't really have a feel on the other two things you mentioned, because everyone is poor out there and we know that debt is to be avoided if possible. If you take a student loan, you by default leave the region because you can't find a job to pay for it where you grew up. Brain drain is a massive problem - but not for the cities, because that's where they are being drained to.
If I have to drive 300 miles to find a place where the measures are actually close to the measurement, it's not very good to use for quality-of-life. And if people keep using them to "prove" that things are good, like federal politicians do, I'm going to treat them as a untrustworthy because they clearly live in different reality than me. I'm not going to believe you necessarily even if you are telling the truth.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday May 02 2018, @09:54AM (3 children)
And are you very sure that all of the above are 'true dichotomies'?
Because they may be dichotomies only because you take for granted some assumptions one shouldn't.
Why the pension/ heath care benefits of the elderly need to compete with the wages of the young?
Why does the price of homes need to increase over time? After all, when I buy many other kinds of assets, the value of them go down over time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 02 2018, @02:10PM (2 children)
That would be irrelevant.
No matter the answer to the questions (which I incidentally think aren't worth answering, being both irrelevant and not that insightful), the US has conflicts implied by my questions which could go a long ways to explaining the stresses that result in opioid drug abuse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @02:49PM (1 child)
Smoke and mirrors, eh?
Confuse them, throw them off the track with some 'questions', make them implicitly accept the status quo by accepting those questions as valid.
Otherwise they may see there are other ways beside opioids.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 02 2018, @09:45PM
You have a point there. C0lo never did come up with an example illustrating the absence of "true dichotomies". It was a criticism brought up without context.
I merely focused on the other flaw namely that one doesn't need a perfect dichotomy. All one needs is large trade offs between the choices.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @04:53PM (1 child)
You really are a brainwashed fool. At least you have a few semi-decent points in there, but mostly your a corporate apologist who supports the on going destruction of our environment. Burn in hell you piece of trash.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 02 2018, @09:47PM
Since there is no ongoing destruction of the US environment (it has actually gotten much better over the past 50 years), I rest my case. Go bug someone else with your idiocy.