5 ms·

Why do these opioid epidemic articles keep making the front page of HN? They seem extremely off topic to me.

by mgberlin 9y ago

jerrylives 9y ago
The hand of the free market of ideas
ape4 9y ago
People are hacking their minds.
msmm 9y ago
Because devs that use illicit drugs are jealous that abusers of legal drugs don't go to jail
ashark 9y ago
To be perfectly frank: everyone on the coasts suddenly cares a lot about poor rural flyover-country and Appalachian people's problems because they elected Trump and they'd really like them not to do anything like that ever again. His election is being taken as a cry for help of the involuntary, show up at the bank without pants and reeking of alcohol while screaming about how lawn gnomes are out to get you sort. The articles are on HN because they're all over the media generally, and because most of HN would probably also prefer that someone like Trump not be elected again in the future.
- InitialLastName 9y ago
  I don't think it's wrong to work to understand the motivations and needs of a newly visible and politically active (and potentially destructive) demographic. We don't need to degrade anyone to ask, "what can we do to find reasonable candidates that represent the views of these constituents?" when the alternative is the election of people like Trump.
  - ashark 9y ago
    I wasn't trying to degrade anyone with that description, just present the point of view that I think is driving these sorts of articles in such quantity and prominence. I think it's fair to say that Trump's winning the nomination, let alone the election itself, was seen as an alarmingly insane thing to have happened by many (liberals and conservatives) and, by those who've taken it as a sign there are issues that need to be addressed, is seen as more than a little similar to an individual, very public display of desperate lunacy of the sort warrants intervention and assistance. Like, "whoa, that seemed like an OK thing to do? Oh man, you must need some help, let's figure out what's gone so wrong in your life and try to fix it." I doubt his voters see it that way, though, hence the "involuntary" part. I don't think they were attempting to get across quite that impression with their vote, though the effect of having some of their problems addressed may be the same in the end. Certainly many were expecting Trump himself to be the agent of change in their lives, not a bunch of liberals and "RINO"s who now want to (metaphorically, but also kind of literally) help them sober up, get some counseling, and maybe get signed up for public assistance and job training.
    - throwanem 9y ago
      Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but - and I've said this before on HN, actually, to no more effect than I expect it to have this time - I voted for Trump precisely in order to scare the everloving bejesus out of the US progressive left. Because, from where I sit, either that happens, or something a hell of a lot worse. Because if you guys don't get your shit together and start looking after even those people who don't agree with your politics, and believe things you think are contemptible, and live lives that you don't understand and don't want to - we're going to end up seeing the kind of enormities which will make history forget Hitler's genocide, just as Hitler made history forget what the Turks did to the Armenians. A nation which once sought to be - which once was - a bastion of hope for a better world, a beacon for downtrodden people the world over, will instead collapse into the kind of ruin that poisons the world for decades to follow, that taints the very ideas in which it originated. Every hope that anyone has ever invested in this nation - uncounted millions of immigrants, including your ancestors and mine - will become worth less than nothing. Also, you and everyone you care about will almost certainly suffer and die, and just as likely so will I and everyone I care about, and so will more millions than in any such atrocity before, because - as with so many things - every time we go this route of horror, we get that much better at it. So there's that. Maybe I sound like I'm scared shitless. If so, it's only because I am, all the time now. If you're not, why in God's name aren't you? Because we're both sitting on the same pile of sweating dynamite and gunpowder. If it goes off, I doubt either of us will find much consolation in the fact that the other one's also just been blown sky high. I'm not asking for a bomb squad to swoop in and save us all like something out of the last act of an episode of 24. It's just that I sure think it'd be nice if people would stop playing with all these goddam matches and do something constructive for a change.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  The opioid epidemic is pretty serious on the coasts, too. And lots of use cared about the rest of the country before the election, too.
  - ashark 9y ago
    Sure, but the recent popularity of the topic, and the typical subjects of the coverage (not likely Hillary voters, often rust belt and coal country folks) is probably because it's been chosen as a leading answer to the question "holy crap, how did Trump happen?!" That's why you see articles about it everywhere now.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      Articles about it were all over for at least a couple years before the election (though the election itself drew a lot of attention for a while.) I don't think that's because Trump's election sent shockwaves back in time, though I guess I shouldn't dismiss that out of hand.
tehwebguy 9y ago
My guess it's because: 1. There are enough secretly addicted to opioids on HN 2. It's mostly (?) white people overdosing on opioids so it's finally waking up the majority Either way hopefully this helps fix our collective disdain for addicts so we can kill the stigma and focus on treatment. Maybe there's room for a solid startup in that field.
danso 9y ago
The opioid epidemic is interesting not just from a healthcare angle (of which the issues are quite complicated), but from a societal one too. We seem to be near an age in which human fulfillment/satisfaction will be threatened by an AI/automation revolution. If opioids are -- in the words of a professor quoted by the article, "the ultimate escape drugs", leading users to "curl up in a corner and blank out the world. It's an extremely seductive drug for dead-end downs" -- well, a lot of places might soon feel like dead-end towns, not just in West Virginia.
- oxide 9y ago
  It's already a nationwide structure fire. The current approach of prosecution of doctors, or throwing up miles of red tape between a doctor and a patient has no affect on abusers. Instead, it directly affects people like my grandparents, who rely on quite a bit of opiates for their quality of life. It's almost like DRM for video games. The DRM has no affect on pirates (abusers), instead it only really affects legit customers (my grandparents) You can burn fields of poppies. Prosecute every doctor with a prescription pad, seize and raid to your hearts content and nothing will change. If prescription opiate pills vanished wholesale tomorrow, people would simply switch to heroin, which is more widely available and cheaper than any pill on the black market. The more they tighten the grip, the more things will slip through the cracks. The people who stand to be crushed in the metaphorical palm are people like my grandparents, not the abusers. Until some key changes are made, for example, less red tape between a doctor, an addict seeking treatment, and suboxone therapy, things aren't going to improve. Methadone clinics need to be welcomed into cities and towns with open arms nationwide. A harm reduction attitude has to prevail over persecution and prohibition. Maintenance therapy has problems of its own, making the inevitable withdrawl last months instead of a week or two. Simply due to the longer half-life. Sometimes, folks switch back to heroin to get off of methadone because of this.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
c0nducktr 9y ago
> Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its 'flag' link. If you think a comment is egregious, click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'flag' at the top. (Not all users see flag links; there's a small karma threshold.) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- majewsky 9y ago
  GP said "Why does this make the front page?" instead of "This shouldn't make the front page."
throwanem 9y ago
Look at a map of West Virginia in last year's election. There's one on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_West_Virginia,_2016 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_e... Now take a look at what the candidate they didn't vote for had to say about them. Here's a page with the relevant quote: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/sep/11/context-hillary-clinton-basket-deplorables/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/sep/11/... One of these people talked about how he cared for these people's struggle. He lied, but at least he did so credibly. The other of these people said "boy, it sure would be a good idea if we did that, too", and then didn't, while it became more obvious every day that the machinery of the party that worked for her had employed base chicanery to make sure an erstwhile opponent of hers, whom West Virginians had supported (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_Democratic_primary,_2016 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_Democratic_pri...) before the choice was denied them, could not challenge her claim to hold the presidency by right. But it's more comfortable to blame Russia for the wrong guy getting in. It's more fun, too, because who doesn't love a good conspiracy and an evil empire? So that's what we will do, and those of our brothers and sisters who are suffering because no one of import in the world's richest nation could give a damn about them will go on suffering. And when we tip over the edge of the cliff we're sliding toward and "eat the rich" ceases to be just a song, everyone who's helped drag us to that point of no return will look about wide-eyed in shock and horror and ask: "How did this happen?" Well, I know how it'll happen, and I'm happy to tell you. Him that has ears to hear, let him hear: Your website says you're a man who knows his way around high places. Do you know your way around a metaphor? The Tarot card, "The Fool". It's a thin enough metaphor - thin as a cloud, and that picture from Mount Diablo says it'd hardly be the first time you've had your head in the clouds this year. Are you sure you don't still? Now how about a joke? "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." Well, now you know. But absurd though I be, the warning I'm yapping at you now is serious as falling off a cliff. Will you hear it? Will you heed it? Or, having gone up Devil's Mountain and seen all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them, will you let that vision make you a fool, and take that one last long step that sends you falling down into the abyss? For if you do, then woe unto you, Columbia! Woe unto you, Bethesda! For had the great works been done in Tyre and Sidon that have been done in you, they would have in sackcloth and ashes repented long since. But I say to you, it will be better for Tyre and for Sidon on the day of judgment, than for you. Do I smack of Ezekiel? Very well, then, so I do! - I am a sword, naked in hand, drawn not to strike but to goad; I am a shepherd's staff, swung not to wound but to guide, lest you bring about the fall of Blake's new Jerusalem, and lest the city on a hill be smashed one stone from another, and its tribes driven from their shattered homes into the outer darkness, there to chew their tongues and weep. Or, you know, you could look at what's thus far resulted from the collective disinterest in those whose beliefs you find incompossible and whose customs incomprehensible, and consider what may yet result from continuing to leave them to their sufferings because - despite their desiring nothing out of life save to work hard, look after their families, and generally contribute to the society which supports you without expecting much save a fair shake in return - they do not fit your own individual conception of what your fellow citizens must be in order to qualify for the same social contract on which you so rely. And then, you know, decide to not do that. I don't suggest you should so decide for any especially unselfish reason, either. I suggest you should so decide because, if you think Trump's bad, then believe me, you really do not want to see how much worse things could be. The way this country's constituted, even people you couldn't give a damn about have power. Indeed, each of them has as much as each of you, and that's not going to change. So if things go on as they have been, what comes after Trump, and not very long after at that, will be someone who makes similar promises of succor - and who promises to provide it on the backs of people like you, who always had it in their power to be kind but simply could not bother, and also on the backs of people like me, who are an affront against God and have been too long coddled by the likes of you. I would like for that not to happen. I think you might like for that not to happen, too. Now you know how to make it less likely, instead of more. Indeed, I've told you twice - first in Old Testament kabbalah and fire-and-brimstone metaphor, and then again in bald statements of historical and political fact. If the latter doesn't convince you we have a problem, maybe the former will scare the hell out of you. Or vice versa. Who knows? Maybe one or the other will sink in, but I'd be lying if I said I expect either one to count for anything. Please prove me wrong.

Why do these opioid epidemic articles keep making the front page of HN? They seem extremely off topic to me.

jerrylives 9y ago

The hand of the free market of ideas

ape4 9y ago

People are hacking their minds.

msmm 9y ago

Because devs that use illicit drugs are jealous that abusers of legal drugs don't go to jail

ashark 9y ago

To be perfectly frank: everyone on the coasts suddenly cares a lot about poor rural flyover-country and Appalachian people's problems because they elected Trump and they'd really like them not to do anything like that ever again. His election is being taken as a cry for help of the involuntary, show up at the bank without pants and reeking of alcohol while screaming about how lawn gnomes are out to get you sort. The articles are on HN because they're all over the media generally, and because most of HN would probably also prefer that someone like Trump not be elected again in the future.

InitialLastName 9y ago
I don't think it's wrong to work to understand the motivations and needs of a newly visible and politically active (and potentially destructive) demographic. We don't need to degrade anyone to ask, "what can we do to find reasonable candidates that represent the views of these constituents?" when the alternative is the election of people like Trump.
- ashark 9y ago
  I wasn't trying to degrade anyone with that description, just present the point of view that I think is driving these sorts of articles in such quantity and prominence. I think it's fair to say that Trump's winning the nomination, let alone the election itself, was seen as an alarmingly insane thing to have happened by many (liberals and conservatives) and, by those who've taken it as a sign there are issues that need to be addressed, is seen as more than a little similar to an individual, very public display of desperate lunacy of the sort warrants intervention and assistance. Like, "whoa, that seemed like an OK thing to do? Oh man, you must need some help, let's figure out what's gone so wrong in your life and try to fix it." I doubt his voters see it that way, though, hence the "involuntary" part. I don't think they were attempting to get across quite that impression with their vote, though the effect of having some of their problems addressed may be the same in the end. Certainly many were expecting Trump himself to be the agent of change in their lives, not a bunch of liberals and "RINO"s who now want to (metaphorically, but also kind of literally) help them sober up, get some counseling, and maybe get signed up for public assistance and job training.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but - and I've said this before on HN, actually, to no more effect than I expect it to have this time - I voted for Trump precisely in order to scare the everloving bejesus out of the US progressive left. Because, from where I sit, either that happens, or something a hell of a lot worse. Because if you guys don't get your shit together and start looking after even those people who don't agree with your politics, and believe things you think are contemptible, and live lives that you don't understand and don't want to - we're going to end up seeing the kind of enormities which will make history forget Hitler's genocide, just as Hitler made history forget what the Turks did to the Armenians. A nation which once sought to be - which once was - a bastion of hope for a better world, a beacon for downtrodden people the world over, will instead collapse into the kind of ruin that poisons the world for decades to follow, that taints the very ideas in which it originated. Every hope that anyone has ever invested in this nation - uncounted millions of immigrants, including your ancestors and mine - will become worth less than nothing. Also, you and everyone you care about will almost certainly suffer and die, and just as likely so will I and everyone I care about, and so will more millions than in any such atrocity before, because - as with so many things - every time we go this route of horror, we get that much better at it. So there's that. Maybe I sound like I'm scared shitless. If so, it's only because I am, all the time now. If you're not, why in God's name aren't you? Because we're both sitting on the same pile of sweating dynamite and gunpowder. If it goes off, I doubt either of us will find much consolation in the fact that the other one's also just been blown sky high. I'm not asking for a bomb squad to swoop in and save us all like something out of the last act of an episode of 24. It's just that I sure think it'd be nice if people would stop playing with all these goddam matches and do something constructive for a change.
dragonwriter 9y ago
The opioid epidemic is pretty serious on the coasts, too. And lots of use cared about the rest of the country before the election, too.
- ashark 9y ago
  Sure, but the recent popularity of the topic, and the typical subjects of the coverage (not likely Hillary voters, often rust belt and coal country folks) is probably because it's been chosen as a leading answer to the question "holy crap, how did Trump happen?!" That's why you see articles about it everywhere now.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    Articles about it were all over for at least a couple years before the election (though the election itself drew a lot of attention for a while.) I don't think that's because Trump's election sent shockwaves back in time, though I guess I shouldn't dismiss that out of hand.

tehwebguy 9y ago

My guess it's because: 1. There are enough secretly addicted to opioids on HN 2. It's mostly (?) white people overdosing on opioids so it's finally waking up the majority Either way hopefully this helps fix our collective disdain for addicts so we can kill the stigma and focus on treatment. Maybe there's room for a solid startup in that field.

danso 9y ago

The opioid epidemic is interesting not just from a healthcare angle (of which the issues are quite complicated), but from a societal one too. We seem to be near an age in which human fulfillment/satisfaction will be threatened by an AI/automation revolution. If opioids are -- in the words of a professor quoted by the article, "the ultimate escape drugs", leading users to "curl up in a corner and blank out the world. It's an extremely seductive drug for dead-end downs" -- well, a lot of places might soon feel like dead-end towns, not just in West Virginia.

oxide 9y ago
It's already a nationwide structure fire. The current approach of prosecution of doctors, or throwing up miles of red tape between a doctor and a patient has no affect on abusers. Instead, it directly affects people like my grandparents, who rely on quite a bit of opiates for their quality of life. It's almost like DRM for video games. The DRM has no affect on pirates (abusers), instead it only really affects legit customers (my grandparents) You can burn fields of poppies. Prosecute every doctor with a prescription pad, seize and raid to your hearts content and nothing will change. If prescription opiate pills vanished wholesale tomorrow, people would simply switch to heroin, which is more widely available and cheaper than any pill on the black market. The more they tighten the grip, the more things will slip through the cracks. The people who stand to be crushed in the metaphorical palm are people like my grandparents, not the abusers. Until some key changes are made, for example, less red tape between a doctor, an addict seeking treatment, and suboxone therapy, things aren't going to improve. Methadone clinics need to be welcomed into cities and towns with open arms nationwide. A harm reduction attitude has to prevail over persecution and prohibition. Maintenance therapy has problems of its own, making the inevitable withdrawl last months instead of a week or two. Simply due to the longer half-life. Sometimes, folks switch back to heroin to get off of methadone because of this.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

c0nducktr 9y ago

> Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its 'flag' link. If you think a comment is egregious, click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'flag' at the top. (Not all users see flag links; there's a small karma threshold.) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

majewsky 9y ago
GP said "Why does this make the front page?" instead of "This shouldn't make the front page."

throwanem 9y ago

Look at a map of West Virginia in last year's election. There's one on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_West_Virginia,_2016 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_e... Now take a look at what the candidate they didn't vote for had to say about them. Here's a page with the relevant quote: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/sep/11/context-hillary-clinton-basket-deplorables/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/sep/11/... One of these people talked about how he cared for these people's struggle. He lied, but at least he did so credibly. The other of these people said "boy, it sure would be a good idea if we did that, too", and then didn't, while it became more obvious every day that the machinery of the party that worked for her had employed base chicanery to make sure an erstwhile opponent of hers, whom West Virginians had supported (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_Democratic_primary,_2016 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_Democratic_pri...) before the choice was denied them, could not challenge her claim to hold the presidency by right. But it's more comfortable to blame Russia for the wrong guy getting in. It's more fun, too, because who doesn't love a good conspiracy and an evil empire? So that's what we will do, and those of our brothers and sisters who are suffering because no one of import in the world's richest nation could give a damn about them will go on suffering. And when we tip over the edge of the cliff we're sliding toward and "eat the rich" ceases to be just a song, everyone who's helped drag us to that point of no return will look about wide-eyed in shock and horror and ask: "How did this happen?" Well, I know how it'll happen, and I'm happy to tell you. Him that has ears to hear, let him hear: Your website says you're a man who knows his way around high places. Do you know your way around a metaphor? The Tarot card, "The Fool". It's a thin enough metaphor - thin as a cloud, and that picture from Mount Diablo says it'd hardly be the first time you've had your head in the clouds this year. Are you sure you don't still? Now how about a joke? "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." Well, now you know. But absurd though I be, the warning I'm yapping at you now is serious as falling off a cliff. Will you hear it? Will you heed it? Or, having gone up Devil's Mountain and seen all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them, will you let that vision make you a fool, and take that one last long step that sends you falling down into the abyss? For if you do, then woe unto you, Columbia! Woe unto you, Bethesda! For had the great works been done in Tyre and Sidon that have been done in you, they would have in sackcloth and ashes repented long since. But I say to you, it will be better for Tyre and for Sidon on the day of judgment, than for you. Do I smack of Ezekiel? Very well, then, so I do! - I am a sword, naked in hand, drawn not to strike but to goad; I am a shepherd's staff, swung not to wound but to guide, lest you bring about the fall of Blake's new Jerusalem, and lest the city on a hill be smashed one stone from another, and its tribes driven from their shattered homes into the outer darkness, there to chew their tongues and weep. Or, you know, you could look at what's thus far resulted from the collective disinterest in those whose beliefs you find incompossible and whose customs incomprehensible, and consider what may yet result from continuing to leave them to their sufferings because - despite their desiring nothing out of life save to work hard, look after their families, and generally contribute to the society which supports you without expecting much save a fair shake in return - they do not fit your own individual conception of what your fellow citizens must be in order to qualify for the same social contract on which you so rely. And then, you know, decide to not do that. I don't suggest you should so decide for any especially unselfish reason, either. I suggest you should so decide because, if you think Trump's bad, then believe me, you really do not want to see how much worse things could be. The way this country's constituted, even people you couldn't give a damn about have power. Indeed, each of them has as much as each of you, and that's not going to change. So if things go on as they have been, what comes after Trump, and not very long after at that, will be someone who makes similar promises of succor - and who promises to provide it on the backs of people like you, who always had it in their power to be kind but simply could not bother, and also on the backs of people like me, who are an affront against God and have been too long coddled by the likes of you. I would like for that not to happen. I think you might like for that not to happen, too. Now you know how to make it less likely, instead of more. Indeed, I've told you twice - first in Old Testament kabbalah and fire-and-brimstone metaphor, and then again in bald statements of historical and political fact. If the latter doesn't convince you we have a problem, maybe the former will scare the hell out of you. Or vice versa. Who knows? Maybe one or the other will sink in, but I'd be lying if I said I expect either one to count for anything. Please prove me wrong.