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Opioid Use Could Explain 20% of the Drop in American Men from Labor Force

245 points by mcone 9y ago

dv_dt 9y ago
The title implys the opposite of the last lines of the article... > “I do think it is related to declining labor-force participation among prime-age workers,”Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said in a July Senate hearing when asked about the crisis. “I don’t know if it’s causal or if it’s a symptom of long-running economic maladies that have affected these communities and particularly affected workers who have seen their job opportunities decline.” Edit: added the full quote.
- rainbowmverse 9y ago
  A business news organization seems like it would be biased toward explaining unemployment as a symptom of drug use rather than the other way around. It may be constitutionally incapable of considering that rising poverty and its ills are a result of mindless outsourcing and automation leading to structural unemployment.
  - dingbat 9y ago
    i wouldnt put that much meaning into reasons for the misleading headline choice. simplest explanation is "Opioid Use Explains..." is better clickbait than "Not Sure if Opioid Use is Causal or Symptom"
    - dv_dt 9y ago
      "Opioid use associated with.." would be better journalism. "Explains" is clickbait indeed.
      - nsxwolf 9y ago
        That's better journalism but to the average reader "associated with" means "causes".
  - pishpash 9y ago
    Another example of externality not priced into costs -- if businesses had to bear retraining/unemployment costs to society, they may not outsource as much, or they may still outsource, but be better community citizens. It might also spur governments to do more to stay competitive in a sustainable way, e.g. investing more in education.
    - replicatorblog 9y ago
      "The United States spent $15,171 on each young person in the system — more than any other nation covered in the report." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-glob...
      - fao_ 9y ago
        That doesn't mean that that money is managed well, though.
        replicatorblog 9y ago
        I totally agree, but any discussion of approaches that might improve the efficacy of the spend, e.g. more competition via charters/vouchers, or creating a merit pay system for teachers, is not permitted in polite society. The only solution in elite policy circles is to spend more. The reality is we spend plenty, but we have a structure that makes it difficult to experiment. The problem is exacerbated because the most influential members of the upper classes can bypass the problem by either paying for private schools or by taking advantage of our neo-feudal school districting system and buy into exclusive neighborhoods with "public schools" — which are open to anyone who can swing a $1M mortgage!
        themaninthedark 9y ago
        Nor does it specifically help men. Currently the education system is geared to helping women and some of the policies actually punish men. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gender-gap-boys-lagging/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gender-gap-boys-lagging/ Add in the fact that blue collar jobs are declining, most men are going to ask what is the point of trying. The answer they get back from society is one that they are unneeded.
  - beepboopbeep 9y ago
    bloomberg has some of the best reporting out there. I would not discount it just because it's business driven.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - rainbowmverse 9y ago
      I didn't discount its general reporting. I suggested its inherent bias on the subject might make it a poor source in this one case.
  - Pica_soO 9y ago
    They want there customers to feel good. Shirking responsibilities for ones fellow human and redistributing blame feels good. Its a similar service as prostitution but for the consciousness. Im interested on what there stance towards the DAO is going to be. A Contract-golem replacing CEOs - that's there audience being replaced. Wonder if they are going to stay Neo-Liberal while the Revolution they spawned eats them.
  - darawk 9y ago
    Its most likely though that the causality flows in all directions at once. Structural unemployment causes drug use, drug use causes unemployment. Unemployment causes more unemployment (if your friends are unemployed, it doesn't seem quite so bad, maybe you don't try as hard to get a job). Drug use causes more drug use (if your friend loves Oxycontin, maybe you'd like it too).
    - godzillabrennus 9y ago
      Not to mention that drug use tends to push you into con college (prison) and you can't find a good job after that.
      - macintux 9y ago
        The fact that a felony conviction makes such a strong impact on your ability to find a job, and even to vote, is unfortunate.
        munificent 9y ago
        And by "unfortunate" you mean "a deliberate strategy among people in power to continue to disenfranchise and control marginalized people".
        darawk 9y ago
        That's a pretty bold claim. Why do you believe it's deliberate?
        geofft 9y ago
        The fact that it's deliberate is a common viewpoint among people who have studied it. The New Jim Crow is a good book along these lines targeted at a popular audience. It's definitely an uncomfortable and politically-incorrect claim, but I don't think it's a very bold one (in the sense of being a tenuously-supported leap of logic).
        9y ago
  - jondubois 9y ago
    Yes very good point. When I think about how ridiculously hard I've had to work just to maintain the lifestyle that my parents had and I compare that to how little my parents had to work (and how little ambition they had), it's very clear to me that the baseline amount of work and ambition required to get a decent modest lifestyle has become insanely high. Giving up actually makes sense. Drugs give back that feeling of satisfaction that has gone missing from people's lives.
    - slg 9y ago
      I think that is dangerous mindset. It is unnecessarily idealizing the past while glossing over any potential flaws. It insinuates that people were happier in the past and it ignores that the standard of living for most Americans has gone up over the decades (due mostly to technology and globalization even with little to no increased income). There is still a lot of work that needs to be done to improve things, but lamenting about the good old days is further delaying that progress. EDIT: I changed up the first sentence to be less political as the downvotes reminded me HN is probably not the place for that sentiment.
      - toyg 9y ago
        But it is true that in the past a lower-middle-class family could live on one salary, and office workers would often work less than 36 hours per week. Nowadays two salaries per family are required to stay just above the poverty line, and jobs require a minimum of 40 hours everywhere. This not just in America btw, the same happened all over Western Europe too. It's ridiculous, because clearly automation and IT have increased output by huge factors; but clearly a number of forces (increased competition due to female candidates entering the workforce and lower-class candidates getting good education; adjustment of consumer prices over two salaries per family; etc etc) made it so that, on average, we "work" more for less pay. The work might be lighter on our bodies, and we all have running water in our homes, but apart from that we are not actually improving that much.
        slg 9y ago
        If you dig through the data here [1] you will see that the annual average hours worked by Americans has decreased over the years. The same is true for the French, British, and Germans. Some of that more recent decline might be due to underemployment, but I think it stands in contrast to your accusation that longer hours are some type of new norm. "We all have running water" is also a huge understatement on the improvements that have been made to American living conditions over the last several decades. As a nation we have bigger and better homes, safer and more reliable cars, cleaner air and water, unlimited access to knowledge, and the list goes on and on. [1] - https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm
  - dominotw 9y ago
    Would it be possible to setup 'no minimum wage' economic zones in the country. I know many ppl got their start in tech from doing tech support, perhaps that would help ppl build their skills ( and confidence) from the jobs that get in-sourced from India. Govt can prbly foot the bill to makeup for the wage loss. Just a thought. Empty mind is devils workshop.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - dv_dt 9y ago
      That would be an interesting way to experiment with UBI, in a economic zone with sufficient UBI, you allow no min wage, no unemployment, etc...
    - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
      Given that corporate profits are higher than ever yet only very few are benefiting from that gain, it should be fairly obvious that trickle-down economics isn't working. Why not increase taxes while limiting imports from countries with minimum wages much lower than ours? That way the lower and middle classes would actually see an increase in quality of life, not a decrease that they would see if we removed the minimum wage.
      - methodover 9y ago
        I would definitely not vote for someone in favor of that idea. I see no reason to believe that lower and middle classes here would see an increase in QOL if we started enacting trade restrictions on countries with lower standards of livings than ourselves. What you're talking about is essentially mercantilism, and it's long been discredited in economics.
  - adekok 9y ago
    Rising poverty, loss of manual labor jobs, and permanent injury from manual labor jobs. The men aren't working because they're either injured or unemployed. Then, because their life sucks, the are more likely to turn to drugs. Saying "opioids explain unemployment" has it exactly 100% backwards. The average guy with a job, a house, wife, and 2.2 kids isn't going to get hooked on opioids. His life is already full.
  - gumby 9y ago
    > A business news organization seems like it would be biased toward explaining unemployment as a symptom of drug use rather than the other way around. Why? There's plenty of money to spread around in the drug wars too.
- airza 9y ago
  for some reason you left out the quote just previous to that, “I do think it is related to declining labor-force participation among prime-age workers,” which indicates she thinks there is a relationship?
  - smallnamespace 9y ago
    Yes on the relationship, no on the direction of causality
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - dv_dt 9y ago
    Misread/paste - added the full quote. I don't think it really changes Yellen's position FWIW which is basically correlation != causation.
- jackhack 9y ago
  So to summarize: The head of a cabal of international banks busy looting western civilization through deliberate inflation admits lack of knowledge about relationship between drug use and American unemployment while speaking to her figurehead bosses in the Senate. tl;dr Janet Yellen figuratively shrugs shoulders.
  - dv_dt 9y ago
    Yellen is reflecting the content of the Kreuger paper linked in the article which also states that it has not established causality...
- wordsmattr338 9y ago
  Keyword in title: could "Opioid use COULD explain 20%..." Seems backed up by this part of your quote: "I don’t know if it’s causal or if it’s a symptom of long-running economic maladies..." The title implies exactly what was quoted.
  - sctb 9y ago
    We updated the headline to include "Could", but the original title does not.
- azernik 9y ago
  Which is good journalism - mentioning alternate explanations to the research paper that is the main subject.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  It's possible that one trend feeds the other in a vicious cycle, to be sure.
hueving 9y ago
Where does the other 80% come from?
- d--b 9y ago
  Don't know if that's true or not, but some people blame video games...
  - Clubber 9y ago
    If it were the 80s, they would blame heavy metal.
    - dv_dt 9y ago
      Don't forget D&D as well as Devil worship... I wonder if "opioid addict" will replace the "welfare queen" stereotype for blame-the-victim-and-gov't memes.
      - azernik 9y ago
        Opioid addicts tend to be white, so they seem to be getting more sympathy and less blame in the memeosphere than black drug addicts and welfare dependents did in the 80s.
        Clubber 9y ago
        Ya but just barely. Based on deaths, blacks make up about 10% while the black population is 12%. http://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/opioid-overdose-deaths-by-raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D http://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/opioid-overdose-dea... The biggest problem with the 80s is the same problem we have now, Americans are easily scared shitless about every damn thing and the news just fuels it. In the 80's it was crack epidemic, devil worship and super predators. In the 90s, it was ecstasy and raves. In the 2000s it was meth, terrorism and trailer parks. Today it's opioids and ISIS. As a country, we do irrational things because we always have an irrational fear. Who plants that fear? News. Did you know we turned away boatloads of Jews during the holocaust because we were afraid German spies would be on the ships? https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/jewish-refugees-in-the-us/514742/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/jewish-... Remember Ebola? Zika? Anthrax? That scared the shit out of everyone and it ended up being a whole lot of not much. When FDR said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," he knew how afraid Americans are.
ikeboy 9y ago
Title is somewhat confusing at first - it's saying that it explains 20% of the drop, not that it explains a drop of 20%.
- sctb 9y ago
  Thanks, we added a "Could" and a "the" to help clarify.
gscott 9y ago
With the offshoring of manufacturing jobs men with nothing to do end up taking drugs. In poor areas drug use is very common, so it is easy to eventually give in and try it, then you are hooked the first time and can't stop.
- josefresco 9y ago
  That's, not how addiction works. Also, drug use is common ... everywhere. Rich people can afford to hide their drug use, and can also afford legal protection if they are caught.
  - gscott 9y ago
    So people don't get addicted because they have nothing better to do? I lived in Lakeside California where so many people are addicted to meth, it is crazy. If there was manufacturing people would have something to do, have something to look forward to, an idea of a future and stay off drugs. Not everyone can do white collar work and not everyone wants to work in fast food or 7/11. The outsourcing of work an average everyday person does leads to ideas of no future, which leads to boredom & self-pity, which leads to drug use. For $10 you can get high, be happy and not worry about a thing. That high solves all problems. Then the person just thinks about their next high and how to get it.
    - igravious 9y ago
      You misunderstand. It's not one hit and you're hooked.
      - themaninthedark 9y ago
        Does it matter if it is one hit and you are hooked or five hits and you are hooked? The end result is that we still have people addicted because of how good it makes them feel about their shitty circumstances.
        deleted 9y ago
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tabeth 9y ago
What I've never understood is why anyone does opiates to begin with, under any circumstances. Why even try it? I feel in the media everywhere it is said how terrible it is.
- dvdcxn 9y ago
  Because it's fun. Does there need to be a more deep reason than that?
- kibwen 9y ago
  1. Someone is injured, they are prescribed a painkiller, the prescription runs out before the pain does, and they turn to cheaper street drugs. 2. Desperation and a sense of inescapable hopelessness can make a whole lot of people do things they never thought they'd consider doing.
  - clu3l355 9y ago
    The article is saying that those unemployed have a higher rate of prescription though, not just illicit use >Krueger’s study linked county prescription rates to labor force data from the past 15 years
    - gozur88 9y ago
      That kind of makes sense, though. You probably can't keep up with healthy people if you're in pain bad enough to require opioids.
    - kibwen 9y ago
      Rather than commenting on the article, my goal is to help the grandparent empathize with how people keep falling into such a seemingly obvious trap. If we can't understand why people keep resorting to these behaviors--if we find their motivations entirely alien--then that precludes the ability to take the steps necessary to help these people, or prevent the same from befalling others (and possibly ourselves).
- rainbowmverse 9y ago
s73ver_ 9y ago
I'm sure it's both A and B. If you're one of the people that have been left behind in the economy, drugs look awfully good.
pascalxus 9y ago
Where do they get the money to afford all those opoids? Most people with jobs can barely afford to make ends meat, so how are the growing ranks of unemployed able to afford that, year after year after year? Why wouldn't they rather spend the money on things that mattered? like shelter/rent or food.
- Fifer82 9y ago
  At Uni, I smoked and I would select smokes over food or rent any day. I guess not having a job wouldn't make me feel any different. What good is a tin of beans compared to killing the craving for a smoke for an hour? No contest.
  - _RPM 9y ago
    Disgusting.
    - no_one_ever 9y ago
      Contributive
    - wolco 9y ago
      Non smoker or ex smoker?
      - Majestic121 9y ago
        Probably non smoker, most ex-smokers would understand
        logfromblammo 9y ago
        Has that guy never been addicted to anything? I could stop doing my shameful and deplorable thing any time I want to, but I will probably never want to stop as long as I keep doing it. There is a button inside your brain labelled "do that again!", and it is an integral part of animal behavior control, to reinforce things that tend to increase survival potential. If you do something that pushes the button, you're probably going to do it again. And if you do multiple things that push it, you're going to do most often the thing that pushed it the hardest. Eating food gives it a light tap, but nicotine mashes it really hard. That's why I decided a long, long time ago to never even touch a tobacco cigarette with my fingers, much less put one in my mouth. I'm afraid that not only would I not be able to stop, but that it would displace my lesser addictions, like overeating, video gaming, binge reading, and my other non-salubrious habits, so that I die from lung cancer instead of heart failure, which is the barrel I'm staring down now. Why couldn't I have been addicted to exercise and fresh vegetables, right?
miguelrochefort 9y ago
Europe handles pain management a lot better than America...
deleted 9y ago
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eighthnate 9y ago
Drug use is a symptom of lack of opportunities rather than the cause. American men are using opioids because of the war on men waged by the elite and business elite. When women are favored for jobs while men are being discriminated against and can't get jobs, then they turn to drugs. Drug use is a result of lack of opportunities, it doesn't cause the lack of opportunities. Look at what happened to china in the 1800s with their opium crisis when their society was attack by european powers. Look at what happened to russia in the 1990s when lack of opportunities cause their male population to resort to drugs and alcohol. This is a problem caused by bloomberg and the media. When men are systematically disadvantaged in job prospects, when men are attacked as rapists in college campus and when the media wages a war against men in america, you can't offload the blame to "opioids". The problem in america isn't opioids. It's the media and the elite.
- passivepinetree 9y ago
  Are you seriously suggesting that the decline of the acceptance of rape or the increasing awareness of discrimination against women in America is causing men to use opioids?
  - eighthnate 9y ago
    > Are you seriously suggesting that the decline of the acceptance of rape Where did I say that? You are just resorting to outright straw man arguments now? I'm just pointing out that the lies the media tells about "campus rape culture" as if every college woman is being raped and every college male is a rapist doe a disservice to both men and women. > or the increasing awareness of discrimination against women in America is causing men to use opioids? Discrimination of women? What about the discrimination against men? There are more women at colleges than men. Corporations are favoring hiring women over men. I guess we can blame the opioid crisis for that. When more men attended college than women, then it was sexist patriarchy. Now that more women are attending college than men, the media says it's the "natural" order. "“At the same time, the slower social development and more serious behavioral problems of boys remained and allowed girls to leapfrog over boys in the race to college.” In other words: As things got more equal for boys and girls, a natural advantage began to reveal itself." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/12/11/women-are-dominating-men-at-college-blame-sexism/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/12/11/... Can you imagine if a man said it is the "natural order" for more men to attend colleges than women? But yes, lets pretend that women are being discriminated against. Millions more women attend college than men, but it's the women being discriminated against. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/03/28/look-how-women-outnumber-men-college-campuses-nationwide/YROqwfCPSlKPtSMAzpWloK/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/03/28/look-how-women-...
michaelbuckbee 9y ago
Several people are asking about the "why" of this, much of it stems from legitimate prescriptions for Oxycontin which due to the "12 hour problem" [1] balloons into a heroin (cheaper, easier to get) addiction [2] 1 - http://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/ http://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/ 2 - http://www.narconon.org/blog/heroin-addiction/5-reasons-prescription-addiction-turns-to-heroin/ http://www.narconon.org/blog/heroin-addiction/5-reasons-pres...
- OskarS 9y ago
  Just a warning, that second link goes to Narconon's site. Narconon is the Church of Scientology's organization for drug treatment. While this particular article seems reasonably factual, do not trust any advice given on that site, or use any phone number found there.
- otakucode 9y ago
  Yeah, much of the 'opioid crisis' is entirely manufactured by how we've dealt with things. If doctors had recognized opioids as habit-forming and planned ahead of time to wean patients off of them with a long period of gradual tapering down in dosage (so if it takes 6 months or more, so what?) before quitting. Instead, they decided 'addiction' was a moral failing and simply stopping giving anyone prescriptions no matter how legitimate the need. One thing that rarely gets mentioned is how abundantly SAFE opiates are. If you know what you're getting, know what dosage it is, and know it's not adulterated with other substances, you can use opiates for decades without significant health complications (aside from constipation). Overdoses primarily happen with people mixing medications, trying to use unfamiliar medications recreationally (nothing can save a stupid person who wants to get high but can't be bothered to figure out what the right dose for that is for their body mass), or, most often now, having to get things from a black market where the supply is unknown potency or contents. Fundamentally there is one group of people who is angry that other people are using a chemical to feel good because they feel that if other people aren't suffering as much as they have then they were cheated somehow. And they've been driving policy since the 80s, costing countless lives and monumental amounts of resources. Just to make sure no one has an easier time of life than they had.
Zaskoda 9y ago
correlation != causation
csense 9y ago
I've heard a lot of people say the arrow of causality goes the other way -- between globalization and automation, our society's struggling to provide enough jobs, so the unemployed turn to idleness, despair and drug use. Low interest rates are supposed to help, but for the most part they've just led to bidding wars for real estate and financial assets, instead of building new businesses and increasing payrolls. The 2016 US election is a sign of despair -- our politicians are seen as out-of-touch, barely acknowledging there is even a problem. You know it's bad if people are desperate enough that they're willing to vote for a guy like Donald Trump.
- dv_dt 9y ago
  Causality is a difficult debugging tool for control loops (and even worse in economic feedback networks). Even in a simple control loop, you can know every causal link among individual elements in the system, but it can still be difficult to establish the system cause of why it's going off kilter. In controls, there are at least known mathematical tools for well defined cases - but now expand that to a big worldwide, messy, interlocked feedback networks.. you can again correctly identify many individual causal links.. but be entirely wrong about what is actually driving parts of the system to breakdown. It makes addressing problems at that scale difficult because people tend to argue about individual causal links which are indeed related, but may not be the actual drivers.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 9y ago
  This sums up my thoughts very well. I highly recommend reading Bernard Stiegler on this topic (e.g http://www.samkinsley.com/2016/06/28/how-to-survive-disruption-interview-with-bernard-stiegler-translation/ http://www.samkinsley.com/2016/06/28/how-to-survive-disrupti...) Unfortunately, little of his work is been translated into English yet, but Wikipedia has compiled a good list of articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Stiegler#Online_texts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Stiegler#Online_texts. This might help too: http://www.samkinsley.com/2011/11/01/reading-bernard-stiegler/ http://www.samkinsley.com/2011/11/01/reading-bernard-stiegle... It's certainly anecdotal, but he started doing philosophy while serving a prison sentence (for armed robbery)
- disease 9y ago
hownottowrite 9y ago
From the actual study (p.36): https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/1_krueger.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/1_krueg... "These regressions are difficult to interpret for a number of reasons, but if cross-county differences in opioid prescription rates can be taken as an exogenous result of differences in medical practices and norms conditional on personal characteristics and broad region dummies, the effect of the growth in opioid prescriptions on labor force can be estimated. In particular, I assume that the based opioid prescription rate coefficient reflects inherent differences across regions, and the interaction between prescriptions and time captures the effect of changes in prescriptions on labor force participation over time. This is a big leap, and ideally I would have preferred to have a baseline measure of prescriptions (country-level MME data are unavailable before 2010), so this calculation is at best considered illustrative. These caveats aside, opioid prescriptions per capita increased by a factor of 3.5 nationwide between 1999 and 2015, which is the equivalent of 0.55 log units. Multiplying 0.55 by the coefficient on the interaction between opioids and the second period (.011), suggests that the increase in opioid prescriptions could account for perhaps a 0.6 percentage point decline in male labor force participation, which is 20 percent of the observed decline in this period."
- nostromo 9y ago
  Scientist: "difficult to interpret... I assume... This is a big leap... ideally I would have preferred... this calculation is at best considered illustrative... caveats aside..." Reporter: "Opioid Use Explains 20% of Drop in American Men From Labor Force"
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  - chromaton 9y ago
    Fortune has "1 in 5 Men Drop Out of the Labor Market Because of Drugs".
BurningFrog 9y ago
The book to read about the opioid crisis is Dreamland by Sam Quinones. It is really well written and researched and lays out the several separate events and trends that converged to make this perfect storm happen when and where it did: https://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate-Epidemic/dp/1620402521 https://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate-Epidem...
EternalData 9y ago
There's been a lot of work done on the effects of long-term unemployment -- I'd wager that a lack of purpose drives opioid use rather than the other way around...
- cprayingmantis 9y ago
  It works both directions. I'll give you a pretty common example for my neck of the woods. A good friend of mine worked in a machine shop and had a great job for rural America ran his own small lawn-care business on his days off. One day he hurt his back bad, he didn't have time or money for physical therapy (who else would pay the bills) which would've probably been best instead the doctor prescribed opioids and insurance paid. So he went for a few months and it got worse, which was probably just him building up a tolerance, rinse and repeat a few times and he was a fully burned out addict. Couldn't hold his job because of how fried he was. This isn't an isolated incident it's an all too common pattern I've seen. The cycle works: you go to work and work as hard as you can, you get hurt, you can't afford the best care option, you take the cheaper meds so you can continue working, tolerance builds up, you can't perform, then you're let go. In the end you're left broke, hurting, unemployed, and addicted.
danschumann 9y ago
From listening to Jordan Peterson talk about psych, he says if men get unemployed, they're going to develop depression and chronic pain(and he says the two are almost one in the same), and then turn to opioids, especially if they're conscientious.
- cryoshon 9y ago
  it's no secret why this is the case. when society rejects you, it hurts at a tribal and physical level..
- timsayshey 9y ago
  I've noticed Jordan Peterson getting mentioned a lot around here lately. Do you have a link to his lecture on this topic?
  - drdeadringer 9y ago
    Not the video, but found the quote: "Partly what you need to do is decide what your highest value is. It's the star. What are you aiming for? You can decide. But there are some criteria. It should be good for you in a way that facilitates your moving forward. Maybe it should be good for you in a way that's also good for your family, as well as for the larger community. It should cover the domain of life. There's constraints on what you should regard as a value, but within those constraints you have the choice. You have choice. The thing is that people will carry a heavy load if they get to pick the load. And they think, 'well, I won't carry any load.' Ok, fine, but then you'll be like the sled dog that has nothing to pull. You'll get bored. People are pack animals. They need to pull against a wait. And that's not true for everyone. It's not true for conscientious people. For the typical person, they'll eat themselves up unless they have a load. This is why there's such an opiate epidemic among so many dispossessed white, middle aged, unemployed men in the U.S. They lose their job, and then they're done. They despise themselves. They develop chronic pain syndromes and depression. And the chronic pain is treated with opiates. That's what we're doing. And you should watch when you talk to young men about responsibility. They're so thrilled about it. It just blows me away. Really?! That's what the counter-culture is? Grow up and do something useful. Really? I can do that? Oh, I'm so excited by that idea. No one ever mentioned that before. Rights, rights, rights, rights. Jesus. It's appalling. People have had enough of that. And they better have, because it's a non-productive mode of being. Responsibility, man. That's where the meaning in life is." --Jordan B Peterson
brandonmenc 9y ago
My hometown - located on the edge of the rust belt - is in the midst of a national news-making opioid and heroin epidemic. Anecdotally, I believe the converse is true.
not_a_troll2 9y ago
Opiates solve the feminism puzzle!
bandrami 9y ago
The rest of the world manages to get by on the 15% of the world's opioid supply that's left after the US uses 85%. Opioids have never been found effective at managing chronic pain.
pg_is_a_butt 9y ago
how about prime age men are taking anymore more of your bullshit, and we quit. we are waiting for you all to die. you will. we're fine. you're all idiots.
jefe_ 9y ago
I have an uncle who owns a factory in Northeast Ohio. I saw him over the summer and this is easily the number one issue affecting his day to day operations. He showed me a few security camera videos of people coming to work high and literally going crazy, and then a video of someone who had arrived for a job interview, but just sat in the lobby dazed and unresponsive to commands to leave. The videos were shocking, people were like zombies. He can't find people to hire, and he can't keep the people he has, if they don't overdose at work, they overdose at home. I knew it was an issue, but didn't know it was the main issue facing American industry.
- rjbwork 9y ago
  Do you know how much he is offering to pay entry-level employees?
  - jefe_ 9y ago
    I do not unfortunately. I do think based on what he was describing he would have enough incentive to pay more if that were feasible and resulted in talent that prevented these issues.
    - jdc 9y ago
      Has he considered offering relocation?
      - lotsofpulp 9y ago
        Maybe by the time an employer offered enough compensation to create an incentive to move to northeast Ohio, the cost of the good might be so high that it would just be worth it to manufacture in China.
        TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
        Then perhaps we should do something about that economic loophole. If our country's employers can't provide a good, rising quality of life to its workers, then something needs to change.
RealityNow 9y ago
What's causing the opioid use? I'd imagine the causation goes both ways. Has anybody actually asked these people why they use opioids? Or is it just economists running statistical regressions from their ivory towers?
bitL 9y ago
Wow, didn't know that 1/5 of US guys IDGAFed on society. Must be quite hostile society to men when they can't find anything keeping them interested. I think that's close to rates in Soviet Union after collapse.
- bagacrap 9y ago
  Male participation didn't drop by 20%. Rather, 20% of the drop that has been experienced might be linked to opioids.
  - bitL 9y ago
    Ah OK, got it. How big was the overall drop? I assume a lot less than 20%.
    - wnissen 9y ago
      The overall drop was from 66% of the population to 63% in the last 15 years. But really the drop was from 2007-2014. https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300061 https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300061 Basically an entire major metro area of people who would have worked but don't. The fraction of people on Social Security Disability is only up by 1%, so the other 2/3rds aren't bringing in money. Another way of looking at it is to say that in 2000 only 8% of "prime working age" males didn't have a job. By 2014 it was 11%. A relative increase of more than a third in less than a generation. The other interesting thing is that women's labor participation is also down. There was pretty much an unbroken increase going back to the 50s, and then around 2000 it started to drop. The thing is, the drop in percentage points (the total number of non-working people) is about the same for men and for women, as far as I can see. So I don't understand where the idea comes from that it's men who are getting hit particularly hard.
cubano 9y ago
I'd like to turn this around somewhat and find a study that shows just how many "productive", employed citizens are actually using prescribed opioids and ADD medicines (methamphetamines) that help them to work harder and longer hours, because my bet is that it would be at least a significant fraction. My point? Maybe just because someone is taking opioids, people shouldn't automatically label them as unhireable. People on suboxone and methadone would test positive for opioids as well...are these people also considered unhireable?
mycosis 9y ago
Funny how we've been protecting poppy fields in Afghanistan for 15 years. Probably just a coincidence.
- pizza 9y ago
  Oh honey America's role in Afghan poppy industry goes so much further back than 15 years ago. America built a dam in Afghanistan in the 1950s. The dam changed the soil conditions and what could grow in the region. It was found that opium would grow well in the conditions, which meant that people would grow it to provide food for their families. Then the Taliban started controlling the trade, and profited tidily, and expanded it significantly. Destroying the opium trade would likely just add to the misery, by now. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1997-03-29/news/1997088009_1_opium-poppy-helmand-river http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1997-03-29/news/1997088009_...
emodendroket 9y ago
I heard them talking about this on the radio and they were talking about how, supposedly, one of their problems is young people would rather become drug dealers than work in the factories because it pays so much better. But if that is really true (nothing was offered as proof except a factory manager's assertion, so it seems kind of dubious to me) it seems like the obvious solution is to pay more so that isn't the case.
- theonemind 9y ago
  I heard that drug dealing comes out to about minimum wage. They talked about in the Freakonomics book. http://articles.latimes.com/2005/apr/24/opinion/oe-dubner24 http://articles.latimes.com/2005/apr/24/opinion/oe-dubner24
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Depending on how reliable the hours are at one job than the other he might still be right. But yeah, most drug dealers aren't striking it rich and I doubt factory managers are particularly knowledgeable about the topic.
- SadWebDeveloper 9y ago
  Dealing drugs is high risk with relative low work, labor working is most of the times low risk and really high work. It's difficult to educate the population, specially those in the lower tier of society, about the dangers on drug dealing, America et al should legalize and regulate "hard" drugs like we do we with tobacco, alcohol and weed; it won't tackle drug use but will definitively lower the profit.
- bjd2385 9y ago
  Most factories in my area will start you off at less than $14/hr. Granted it's full time, but that's roughly less than $20k/yr after taxes, which is hardly enough to live on, let alone raise a family on. I worked for 6 months putting rolls of tape in a box for a smidgen over $10/hr. And at the end I walked out the door because there were no prospects of moving up. Most of the people I know have (single?) parents who are in the same boat, making it almost impossible to move out on their own. Plus, you need reliable transportation, and vehicles are expensive. For someone just getting out of high school it's likely not an option. Basically what I'm saying is, there are a lot of barriers that any employer would need to help overcome (wage being perhaps the biggest part) before you see any changes in this sector of society. No kid my age wants to be a drug dealer. I don't care who you are or how poor your home life was. I would much rather go to work, get a loan for a half-decent (or even somewhat nice) vehicle that'll last me a decade if I take care of it, have my own apartment so I can have a few friends or my girlfriend over, etc. I wouldn't say my generation is lazy. I just don't think factories or employers in general should require stable state of mind or hard work without paying enough to really make a difference in someone's life, i.e. enough to support a stable, independent way of life.
pasbesoin 9y ago
Or, the dropping of American men from the labor force (i.e. not by their choice nor volition) could explain x% of opiod use... Actually, this seems to be borne out be reporting of newer surveys and studies. Those in stable employment and social settings are less vulnerable to addiction. Even when they "experiment"; they have more reasons not to chase the experience down the rabbit hole. I've heard this specifically from several recent sources of reporting. Different shows and segments, largely on public radio. That's not to mention the growing media and public re-evaluation of addiction and its causes, treatments, remediations, and possible solutions -- alongside comparison with the increasingly obviously counter-productive and expensive "tough on crime" practices with respect to it -- now taking place in the U.S.
pow_pp_-1_v 9y ago
I just don't understand why politicians don't take this seriously[1]. A smart and savvy politician could build presidency reaching career if they spent time talking about this and trying to find solutions. [1] I could be wrong.
Mikeb85 9y ago
Pretty sure the drop in the labour force is the cause, and the opioid use the result.
micheljones 9y ago
The white male privilege.
lsc 9y ago
Interesting, because yeah, I think people who fall out of the workforce should often be considered a social or psychological problem rather than an economic problem. You are 'unemployed' if you have looked for work in the last month. I'm only exaggerating a little when I say I haven't gone more than a month without looking for work... ever, past the age of fourteen or so. Even when I was happy with my current gig. You are a 'discouraged worker' if you've looked for work in the last year. Year. A lot changes in a year. I personally do my best to interview at all of the top-tier silicon valley companies every year, because there's a lot of randomness in interviews, and I'm not completely unqualified, and getting a fte job at, say, netflix would net me a lot more than what I get as a contractor now, so I roll the dice. I can't imagine spending a year without looking for work. I mean, I'm not saying these people shouldn't be helped; it's just that if you want to work, but you think there are no jobs for you, the rational thing to do is to re-evaluate that belief periodically. My own perception is that demand for my own labor varies sharply, opportunities come and go in a very short period of time. If you find logging into dice and sending some emails once a month too difficult, you have some other problem; I'm no shrink, but it sounds like depression to me.... Which is actually reasonably treatable these days; really, getting you treatment for depression so you can get a job is probably an incredibly good return on my social-services tax dollar.
realitymensa 9y ago
There are a lot of assumptions at work here, (pardon the pun) the main basis of this ASSumption is based on invalid surveys, conducted online without any verification and or face to face interviews which are done in any valid scientific determination. Much like the flawed polls of the 2016 election cycle which proved to be problematic for the political predictions of the political process we now see a illogical jump to conclusions not found in valid scientific evidentiary procedures. Quote, "In the Paper published by Alan B Kruger he states that the focus of the paper is focus on the role of pain and pain medication in the lives of prime age men who are not in the labor force and prime age women who are not in the labor force and not primarily taking care of household responsibilities, because these groups express the greatest degree of distress and dissatisfaction with their lives. " According to the paper, what follows is apparently what constitutes science these days. To better understand the role of pain and pain medication in the life of prime age men who are neither working nor looking for work, I conducted a short online panel survey of 571 NLF prime men age 25-54 using an internet panel provided by Survey Sampling Inc, henceforth called the Princeton Pain Survey (PPS).20 That did an online survey of 571 persons and somehow they believe that this is real evidence? Additionally they state that Thus, on any given day, 31 percent of NLF prime age men take pain medication, most likely an opioid-based medication. And these figures likely understate the actual proportion of men taking prescription pain medication given the stigma and legal risk associated with reporting taking narcotics. Consider the statement contained in the quote above. most likely an opioid-based medication. Now excuse me but the word most likely does not belong in any kind of scientific document. Using an online form to gain information and then publish it as if it were valid is just ridiculous. I cannot begin to understand why a “Real Study” was not conducted. This paper while well meaning is in effect meaningless because of the lack of proper scientific investigation and procedures. Additionally the number of Men surveyed, is in itself not a sufficient number to accurately predict any type of medical evidence of prescription drug use as a mediator for the so called, Opioid Crisis. In effect what has happened here is that there has been no scientific distinction between deaths associated with multiple drug use and prescription pain medication use. Even The CDC admits that they did not separate prescription drug deaths from illegal IV drug use, (Heroin) There is a need to call this what it is. You can never expect to solve a problem when you are not willing to address what the problem actually is. The problem is multiple illegal drug use involving IV Heroin, street drugs where the contents of those drugs is unknown. Alcohol use along with multiple drug use most often is the common denominator for drug overdose deaths. How can anyone be expected to take this kind of nonsense seriously when the body of science as a whole "lumps" all conditions and all manner of drug induced deaths together and then "Label" it as a Crisis. This is simply the War on Drugs 2.0

245 points by mcone 9y ago

The title implys the opposite of the last lines of the article... > “I do think it is related to declining labor-force participation among prime-age workers,”Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said in a July Senate hearing when asked about the crisis. “I don’t know if it’s causal or if it’s a symptom of long-running economic maladies that have affected these communities and particularly affected workers who have seen their job opportunities decline.” Edit: added the full quote.

rainbowmverse 9y ago
A business news organization seems like it would be biased toward explaining unemployment as a symptom of drug use rather than the other way around. It may be constitutionally incapable of considering that rising poverty and its ills are a result of mindless outsourcing and automation leading to structural unemployment.
- dingbat 9y ago
  i wouldnt put that much meaning into reasons for the misleading headline choice. simplest explanation is "Opioid Use Explains..." is better clickbait than "Not Sure if Opioid Use is Causal or Symptom"
  - dv_dt 9y ago
    "Opioid use associated with.." would be better journalism. "Explains" is clickbait indeed.
    - nsxwolf 9y ago
      That's better journalism but to the average reader "associated with" means "causes".
- pishpash 9y ago
  Another example of externality not priced into costs -- if businesses had to bear retraining/unemployment costs to society, they may not outsource as much, or they may still outsource, but be better community citizens. It might also spur governments to do more to stay competitive in a sustainable way, e.g. investing more in education.
  - replicatorblog 9y ago
    "The United States spent $15,171 on each young person in the system — more than any other nation covered in the report." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-glob...
    - fao_ 9y ago
      That doesn't mean that that money is managed well, though.
      - replicatorblog 9y ago
        I totally agree, but any discussion of approaches that might improve the efficacy of the spend, e.g. more competition via charters/vouchers, or creating a merit pay system for teachers, is not permitted in polite society. The only solution in elite policy circles is to spend more. The reality is we spend plenty, but we have a structure that makes it difficult to experiment. The problem is exacerbated because the most influential members of the upper classes can bypass the problem by either paying for private schools or by taking advantage of our neo-feudal school districting system and buy into exclusive neighborhoods with "public schools" — which are open to anyone who can swing a $1M mortgage!
      - themaninthedark 9y ago
        Nor does it specifically help men. Currently the education system is geared to helping women and some of the policies actually punish men. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gender-gap-boys-lagging/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gender-gap-boys-lagging/ Add in the fact that blue collar jobs are declining, most men are going to ask what is the point of trying. The answer they get back from society is one that they are unneeded.
- beepboopbeep 9y ago
  bloomberg has some of the best reporting out there. I would not discount it just because it's business driven.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - rainbowmverse 9y ago
    I didn't discount its general reporting. I suggested its inherent bias on the subject might make it a poor source in this one case.
- Pica_soO 9y ago
  They want there customers to feel good. Shirking responsibilities for ones fellow human and redistributing blame feels good. Its a similar service as prostitution but for the consciousness. Im interested on what there stance towards the DAO is going to be. A Contract-golem replacing CEOs - that's there audience being replaced. Wonder if they are going to stay Neo-Liberal while the Revolution they spawned eats them.
- darawk 9y ago
  Its most likely though that the causality flows in all directions at once. Structural unemployment causes drug use, drug use causes unemployment. Unemployment causes more unemployment (if your friends are unemployed, it doesn't seem quite so bad, maybe you don't try as hard to get a job). Drug use causes more drug use (if your friend loves Oxycontin, maybe you'd like it too).
  - godzillabrennus 9y ago
    Not to mention that drug use tends to push you into con college (prison) and you can't find a good job after that.
    - macintux 9y ago
      The fact that a felony conviction makes such a strong impact on your ability to find a job, and even to vote, is unfortunate.
      - munificent 9y ago
        And by "unfortunate" you mean "a deliberate strategy among people in power to continue to disenfranchise and control marginalized people".
        darawk 9y ago
        That's a pretty bold claim. Why do you believe it's deliberate?
        geofft 9y ago
        The fact that it's deliberate is a common viewpoint among people who have studied it. The New Jim Crow is a good book along these lines targeted at a popular audience. It's definitely an uncomfortable and politically-incorrect claim, but I don't think it's a very bold one (in the sense of being a tenuously-supported leap of logic).
        9y ago
- jondubois 9y ago
  Yes very good point. When I think about how ridiculously hard I've had to work just to maintain the lifestyle that my parents had and I compare that to how little my parents had to work (and how little ambition they had), it's very clear to me that the baseline amount of work and ambition required to get a decent modest lifestyle has become insanely high. Giving up actually makes sense. Drugs give back that feeling of satisfaction that has gone missing from people's lives.
  - slg 9y ago
    I think that is dangerous mindset. It is unnecessarily idealizing the past while glossing over any potential flaws. It insinuates that people were happier in the past and it ignores that the standard of living for most Americans has gone up over the decades (due mostly to technology and globalization even with little to no increased income). There is still a lot of work that needs to be done to improve things, but lamenting about the good old days is further delaying that progress. EDIT: I changed up the first sentence to be less political as the downvotes reminded me HN is probably not the place for that sentiment.
    - toyg 9y ago
      But it is true that in the past a lower-middle-class family could live on one salary, and office workers would often work less than 36 hours per week. Nowadays two salaries per family are required to stay just above the poverty line, and jobs require a minimum of 40 hours everywhere. This not just in America btw, the same happened all over Western Europe too. It's ridiculous, because clearly automation and IT have increased output by huge factors; but clearly a number of forces (increased competition due to female candidates entering the workforce and lower-class candidates getting good education; adjustment of consumer prices over two salaries per family; etc etc) made it so that, on average, we "work" more for less pay. The work might be lighter on our bodies, and we all have running water in our homes, but apart from that we are not actually improving that much.
      - slg 9y ago
        If you dig through the data here [1] you will see that the annual average hours worked by Americans has decreased over the years. The same is true for the French, British, and Germans. Some of that more recent decline might be due to underemployment, but I think it stands in contrast to your accusation that longer hours are some type of new norm. "We all have running water" is also a huge understatement on the improvements that have been made to American living conditions over the last several decades. As a nation we have bigger and better homes, safer and more reliable cars, cleaner air and water, unlimited access to knowledge, and the list goes on and on. [1] - https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm
- dominotw 9y ago
  Would it be possible to setup 'no minimum wage' economic zones in the country. I know many ppl got their start in tech from doing tech support, perhaps that would help ppl build their skills ( and confidence) from the jobs that get in-sourced from India. Govt can prbly foot the bill to makeup for the wage loss. Just a thought. Empty mind is devils workshop.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dv_dt 9y ago
    That would be an interesting way to experiment with UBI, in a economic zone with sufficient UBI, you allow no min wage, no unemployment, etc...
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    Given that corporate profits are higher than ever yet only very few are benefiting from that gain, it should be fairly obvious that trickle-down economics isn't working. Why not increase taxes while limiting imports from countries with minimum wages much lower than ours? That way the lower and middle classes would actually see an increase in quality of life, not a decrease that they would see if we removed the minimum wage.
    - methodover 9y ago
      I would definitely not vote for someone in favor of that idea. I see no reason to believe that lower and middle classes here would see an increase in QOL if we started enacting trade restrictions on countries with lower standards of livings than ourselves. What you're talking about is essentially mercantilism, and it's long been discredited in economics.
- adekok 9y ago
  Rising poverty, loss of manual labor jobs, and permanent injury from manual labor jobs. The men aren't working because they're either injured or unemployed. Then, because their life sucks, the are more likely to turn to drugs. Saying "opioids explain unemployment" has it exactly 100% backwards. The average guy with a job, a house, wife, and 2.2 kids isn't going to get hooked on opioids. His life is already full.
- gumby 9y ago
  > A business news organization seems like it would be biased toward explaining unemployment as a symptom of drug use rather than the other way around. Why? There's plenty of money to spread around in the drug wars too.
airza 9y ago
for some reason you left out the quote just previous to that, “I do think it is related to declining labor-force participation among prime-age workers,” which indicates she thinks there is a relationship?
- smallnamespace 9y ago
  Yes on the relationship, no on the direction of causality
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dv_dt 9y ago
  Misread/paste - added the full quote. I don't think it really changes Yellen's position FWIW which is basically correlation != causation.
jackhack 9y ago
So to summarize: The head of a cabal of international banks busy looting western civilization through deliberate inflation admits lack of knowledge about relationship between drug use and American unemployment while speaking to her figurehead bosses in the Senate. tl;dr Janet Yellen figuratively shrugs shoulders.
- dv_dt 9y ago
  Yellen is reflecting the content of the Kreuger paper linked in the article which also states that it has not established causality...
wordsmattr338 9y ago
Keyword in title: could "Opioid use COULD explain 20%..." Seems backed up by this part of your quote: "I don’t know if it’s causal or if it’s a symptom of long-running economic maladies..." The title implies exactly what was quoted.
- sctb 9y ago
  We updated the headline to include "Could", but the original title does not.
azernik 9y ago
Which is good journalism - mentioning alternate explanations to the research paper that is the main subject.
emodendroket 9y ago
It's possible that one trend feeds the other in a vicious cycle, to be sure.

hueving 9y ago

Where does the other 80% come from?

d--b 9y ago
Don't know if that's true or not, but some people blame video games...
- Clubber 9y ago
  If it were the 80s, they would blame heavy metal.
  - dv_dt 9y ago
    Don't forget D&D as well as Devil worship... I wonder if "opioid addict" will replace the "welfare queen" stereotype for blame-the-victim-and-gov't memes.
    - azernik 9y ago
      Opioid addicts tend to be white, so they seem to be getting more sympathy and less blame in the memeosphere than black drug addicts and welfare dependents did in the 80s.
      - Clubber 9y ago
        Ya but just barely. Based on deaths, blacks make up about 10% while the black population is 12%. http://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/opioid-overdose-deaths-by-raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D http://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/opioid-overdose-dea... The biggest problem with the 80s is the same problem we have now, Americans are easily scared shitless about every damn thing and the news just fuels it. In the 80's it was crack epidemic, devil worship and super predators. In the 90s, it was ecstasy and raves. In the 2000s it was meth, terrorism and trailer parks. Today it's opioids and ISIS. As a country, we do irrational things because we always have an irrational fear. Who plants that fear? News. Did you know we turned away boatloads of Jews during the holocaust because we were afraid German spies would be on the ships? https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/jewish-refugees-in-the-us/514742/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/jewish-... Remember Ebola? Zika? Anthrax? That scared the shit out of everyone and it ended up being a whole lot of not much. When FDR said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," he knew how afraid Americans are.

ikeboy 9y ago

Title is somewhat confusing at first - it's saying that it explains 20% of the drop, not that it explains a drop of 20%.

sctb 9y ago
Thanks, we added a "Could" and a "the" to help clarify.

gscott 9y ago

With the offshoring of manufacturing jobs men with nothing to do end up taking drugs. In poor areas drug use is very common, so it is easy to eventually give in and try it, then you are hooked the first time and can't stop.

josefresco 9y ago
That's, not how addiction works. Also, drug use is common ... everywhere. Rich people can afford to hide their drug use, and can also afford legal protection if they are caught.
- gscott 9y ago
  So people don't get addicted because they have nothing better to do? I lived in Lakeside California where so many people are addicted to meth, it is crazy. If there was manufacturing people would have something to do, have something to look forward to, an idea of a future and stay off drugs. Not everyone can do white collar work and not everyone wants to work in fast food or 7/11. The outsourcing of work an average everyday person does leads to ideas of no future, which leads to boredom & self-pity, which leads to drug use. For $10 you can get high, be happy and not worry about a thing. That high solves all problems. Then the person just thinks about their next high and how to get it.
  - igravious 9y ago
    You misunderstand. It's not one hit and you're hooked.
    - themaninthedark 9y ago
      Does it matter if it is one hit and you are hooked or five hits and you are hooked? The end result is that we still have people addicted because of how good it makes them feel about their shitty circumstances.
      - deleted 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tabeth 9y ago

What I've never understood is why anyone does opiates to begin with, under any circumstances. Why even try it? I feel in the media everywhere it is said how terrible it is.

dvdcxn 9y ago
Because it's fun. Does there need to be a more deep reason than that?
kibwen 9y ago
1. Someone is injured, they are prescribed a painkiller, the prescription runs out before the pain does, and they turn to cheaper street drugs. 2. Desperation and a sense of inescapable hopelessness can make a whole lot of people do things they never thought they'd consider doing.
- clu3l355 9y ago
  The article is saying that those unemployed have a higher rate of prescription though, not just illicit use >Krueger’s study linked county prescription rates to labor force data from the past 15 years
  - gozur88 9y ago
    That kind of makes sense, though. You probably can't keep up with healthy people if you're in pain bad enough to require opioids.
  - kibwen 9y ago
    Rather than commenting on the article, my goal is to help the grandparent empathize with how people keep falling into such a seemingly obvious trap. If we can't understand why people keep resorting to these behaviors--if we find their motivations entirely alien--then that precludes the ability to take the steps necessary to help these people, or prevent the same from befalling others (and possibly ourselves).
rainbowmverse 9y ago

s73ver_ 9y ago

I'm sure it's both A and B. If you're one of the people that have been left behind in the economy, drugs look awfully good.

pascalxus 9y ago

Where do they get the money to afford all those opoids? Most people with jobs can barely afford to make ends meat, so how are the growing ranks of unemployed able to afford that, year after year after year? Why wouldn't they rather spend the money on things that mattered? like shelter/rent or food.

Fifer82 9y ago
At Uni, I smoked and I would select smokes over food or rent any day. I guess not having a job wouldn't make me feel any different. What good is a tin of beans compared to killing the craving for a smoke for an hour? No contest.
- _RPM 9y ago
  Disgusting.
  - no_one_ever 9y ago
    Contributive
  - wolco 9y ago
    Non smoker or ex smoker?
    - Majestic121 9y ago
      Probably non smoker, most ex-smokers would understand
      - logfromblammo 9y ago
        Has that guy never been addicted to anything? I could stop doing my shameful and deplorable thing any time I want to, but I will probably never want to stop as long as I keep doing it. There is a button inside your brain labelled "do that again!", and it is an integral part of animal behavior control, to reinforce things that tend to increase survival potential. If you do something that pushes the button, you're probably going to do it again. And if you do multiple things that push it, you're going to do most often the thing that pushed it the hardest. Eating food gives it a light tap, but nicotine mashes it really hard. That's why I decided a long, long time ago to never even touch a tobacco cigarette with my fingers, much less put one in my mouth. I'm afraid that not only would I not be able to stop, but that it would displace my lesser addictions, like overeating, video gaming, binge reading, and my other non-salubrious habits, so that I die from lung cancer instead of heart failure, which is the barrel I'm staring down now. Why couldn't I have been addicted to exercise and fresh vegetables, right?

miguelrochefort 9y ago

Europe handles pain management a lot better than America...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

eighthnate 9y ago

Drug use is a symptom of lack of opportunities rather than the cause. American men are using opioids because of the war on men waged by the elite and business elite. When women are favored for jobs while men are being discriminated against and can't get jobs, then they turn to drugs. Drug use is a result of lack of opportunities, it doesn't cause the lack of opportunities. Look at what happened to china in the 1800s with their opium crisis when their society was attack by european powers. Look at what happened to russia in the 1990s when lack of opportunities cause their male population to resort to drugs and alcohol. This is a problem caused by bloomberg and the media. When men are systematically disadvantaged in job prospects, when men are attacked as rapists in college campus and when the media wages a war against men in america, you can't offload the blame to "opioids". The problem in america isn't opioids. It's the media and the elite.

passivepinetree 9y ago
Are you seriously suggesting that the decline of the acceptance of rape or the increasing awareness of discrimination against women in America is causing men to use opioids?
- eighthnate 9y ago
  > Are you seriously suggesting that the decline of the acceptance of rape Where did I say that? You are just resorting to outright straw man arguments now? I'm just pointing out that the lies the media tells about "campus rape culture" as if every college woman is being raped and every college male is a rapist doe a disservice to both men and women. > or the increasing awareness of discrimination against women in America is causing men to use opioids? Discrimination of women? What about the discrimination against men? There are more women at colleges than men. Corporations are favoring hiring women over men. I guess we can blame the opioid crisis for that. When more men attended college than women, then it was sexist patriarchy. Now that more women are attending college than men, the media says it's the "natural" order. "“At the same time, the slower social development and more serious behavioral problems of boys remained and allowed girls to leapfrog over boys in the race to college.” In other words: As things got more equal for boys and girls, a natural advantage began to reveal itself." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/12/11/women-are-dominating-men-at-college-blame-sexism/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/12/11/... Can you imagine if a man said it is the "natural order" for more men to attend colleges than women? But yes, lets pretend that women are being discriminated against. Millions more women attend college than men, but it's the women being discriminated against. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/03/28/look-how-women-outnumber-men-college-campuses-nationwide/YROqwfCPSlKPtSMAzpWloK/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/03/28/look-how-women-...

michaelbuckbee 9y ago

Several people are asking about the "why" of this, much of it stems from legitimate prescriptions for Oxycontin which due to the "12 hour problem" [1] balloons into a heroin (cheaper, easier to get) addiction [2] 1 - http://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/ http://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/ 2 - http://www.narconon.org/blog/heroin-addiction/5-reasons-prescription-addiction-turns-to-heroin/ http://www.narconon.org/blog/heroin-addiction/5-reasons-pres...

OskarS 9y ago
Just a warning, that second link goes to Narconon's site. Narconon is the Church of Scientology's organization for drug treatment. While this particular article seems reasonably factual, do not trust any advice given on that site, or use any phone number found there.
otakucode 9y ago
Yeah, much of the 'opioid crisis' is entirely manufactured by how we've dealt with things. If doctors had recognized opioids as habit-forming and planned ahead of time to wean patients off of them with a long period of gradual tapering down in dosage (so if it takes 6 months or more, so what?) before quitting. Instead, they decided 'addiction' was a moral failing and simply stopping giving anyone prescriptions no matter how legitimate the need. One thing that rarely gets mentioned is how abundantly SAFE opiates are. If you know what you're getting, know what dosage it is, and know it's not adulterated with other substances, you can use opiates for decades without significant health complications (aside from constipation). Overdoses primarily happen with people mixing medications, trying to use unfamiliar medications recreationally (nothing can save a stupid person who wants to get high but can't be bothered to figure out what the right dose for that is for their body mass), or, most often now, having to get things from a black market where the supply is unknown potency or contents. Fundamentally there is one group of people who is angry that other people are using a chemical to feel good because they feel that if other people aren't suffering as much as they have then they were cheated somehow. And they've been driving policy since the 80s, costing countless lives and monumental amounts of resources. Just to make sure no one has an easier time of life than they had.

Zaskoda 9y ago

correlation != causation

csense 9y ago

I've heard a lot of people say the arrow of causality goes the other way -- between globalization and automation, our society's struggling to provide enough jobs, so the unemployed turn to idleness, despair and drug use. Low interest rates are supposed to help, but for the most part they've just led to bidding wars for real estate and financial assets, instead of building new businesses and increasing payrolls. The 2016 US election is a sign of despair -- our politicians are seen as out-of-touch, barely acknowledging there is even a problem. You know it's bad if people are desperate enough that they're willing to vote for a guy like Donald Trump.

dv_dt 9y ago
Causality is a difficult debugging tool for control loops (and even worse in economic feedback networks). Even in a simple control loop, you can know every causal link among individual elements in the system, but it can still be difficult to establish the system cause of why it's going off kilter. In controls, there are at least known mathematical tools for well defined cases - but now expand that to a big worldwide, messy, interlocked feedback networks.. you can again correctly identify many individual causal links.. but be entirely wrong about what is actually driving parts of the system to breakdown. It makes addressing problems at that scale difficult because people tend to argue about individual causal links which are indeed related, but may not be the actual drivers.
rcMgD2BwE72F 9y ago
This sums up my thoughts very well. I highly recommend reading Bernard Stiegler on this topic (e.g http://www.samkinsley.com/2016/06/28/how-to-survive-disruption-interview-with-bernard-stiegler-translation/ http://www.samkinsley.com/2016/06/28/how-to-survive-disrupti...) Unfortunately, little of his work is been translated into English yet, but Wikipedia has compiled a good list of articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Stiegler#Online_texts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Stiegler#Online_texts. This might help too: http://www.samkinsley.com/2011/11/01/reading-bernard-stiegler/ http://www.samkinsley.com/2011/11/01/reading-bernard-stiegle... It's certainly anecdotal, but he started doing philosophy while serving a prison sentence (for armed robbery)
disease 9y ago

hownottowrite 9y ago

From the actual study (p.36): https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/1_krueger.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/1_krueg... "These regressions are difficult to interpret for a number of reasons, but if cross-county differences in opioid prescription rates can be taken as an exogenous result of differences in medical practices and norms conditional on personal characteristics and broad region dummies, the effect of the growth in opioid prescriptions on labor force can be estimated. In particular, I assume that the based opioid prescription rate coefficient reflects inherent differences across regions, and the interaction between prescriptions and time captures the effect of changes in prescriptions on labor force participation over time. This is a big leap, and ideally I would have preferred to have a baseline measure of prescriptions (country-level MME data are unavailable before 2010), so this calculation is at best considered illustrative. These caveats aside, opioid prescriptions per capita increased by a factor of 3.5 nationwide between 1999 and 2015, which is the equivalent of 0.55 log units. Multiplying 0.55 by the coefficient on the interaction between opioids and the second period (.011), suggests that the increase in opioid prescriptions could account for perhaps a 0.6 percentage point decline in male labor force participation, which is 20 percent of the observed decline in this period."

nostromo 9y ago
Scientist: "difficult to interpret... I assume... This is a big leap... ideally I would have preferred... this calculation is at best considered illustrative... caveats aside..." Reporter: "Opioid Use Explains 20% of Drop in American Men From Labor Force"
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- chromaton 9y ago
  Fortune has "1 in 5 Men Drop Out of the Labor Market Because of Drugs".

BurningFrog 9y ago

The book to read about the opioid crisis is Dreamland by Sam Quinones. It is really well written and researched and lays out the several separate events and trends that converged to make this perfect storm happen when and where it did: https://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate-Epidemic/dp/1620402521 https://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate-Epidem...

EternalData 9y ago

There's been a lot of work done on the effects of long-term unemployment -- I'd wager that a lack of purpose drives opioid use rather than the other way around...

cprayingmantis 9y ago
It works both directions. I'll give you a pretty common example for my neck of the woods. A good friend of mine worked in a machine shop and had a great job for rural America ran his own small lawn-care business on his days off. One day he hurt his back bad, he didn't have time or money for physical therapy (who else would pay the bills) which would've probably been best instead the doctor prescribed opioids and insurance paid. So he went for a few months and it got worse, which was probably just him building up a tolerance, rinse and repeat a few times and he was a fully burned out addict. Couldn't hold his job because of how fried he was. This isn't an isolated incident it's an all too common pattern I've seen. The cycle works: you go to work and work as hard as you can, you get hurt, you can't afford the best care option, you take the cheaper meds so you can continue working, tolerance builds up, you can't perform, then you're let go. In the end you're left broke, hurting, unemployed, and addicted.

danschumann 9y ago

From listening to Jordan Peterson talk about psych, he says if men get unemployed, they're going to develop depression and chronic pain(and he says the two are almost one in the same), and then turn to opioids, especially if they're conscientious.

cryoshon 9y ago
it's no secret why this is the case. when society rejects you, it hurts at a tribal and physical level..
timsayshey 9y ago
I've noticed Jordan Peterson getting mentioned a lot around here lately. Do you have a link to his lecture on this topic?
- drdeadringer 9y ago
  Not the video, but found the quote: "Partly what you need to do is decide what your highest value is. It's the star. What are you aiming for? You can decide. But there are some criteria. It should be good for you in a way that facilitates your moving forward. Maybe it should be good for you in a way that's also good for your family, as well as for the larger community. It should cover the domain of life. There's constraints on what you should regard as a value, but within those constraints you have the choice. You have choice. The thing is that people will carry a heavy load if they get to pick the load. And they think, 'well, I won't carry any load.' Ok, fine, but then you'll be like the sled dog that has nothing to pull. You'll get bored. People are pack animals. They need to pull against a wait. And that's not true for everyone. It's not true for conscientious people. For the typical person, they'll eat themselves up unless they have a load. This is why there's such an opiate epidemic among so many dispossessed white, middle aged, unemployed men in the U.S. They lose their job, and then they're done. They despise themselves. They develop chronic pain syndromes and depression. And the chronic pain is treated with opiates. That's what we're doing. And you should watch when you talk to young men about responsibility. They're so thrilled about it. It just blows me away. Really?! That's what the counter-culture is? Grow up and do something useful. Really? I can do that? Oh, I'm so excited by that idea. No one ever mentioned that before. Rights, rights, rights, rights. Jesus. It's appalling. People have had enough of that. And they better have, because it's a non-productive mode of being. Responsibility, man. That's where the meaning in life is." --Jordan B Peterson

brandonmenc 9y ago

My hometown - located on the edge of the rust belt - is in the midst of a national news-making opioid and heroin epidemic. Anecdotally, I believe the converse is true.

not_a_troll2 9y ago

Opiates solve the feminism puzzle!

bandrami 9y ago

The rest of the world manages to get by on the 15% of the world's opioid supply that's left after the US uses 85%. Opioids have never been found effective at managing chronic pain.

pg_is_a_butt 9y ago

how about prime age men are taking anymore more of your bullshit, and we quit. we are waiting for you all to die. you will. we're fine. you're all idiots.

jefe_ 9y ago

I have an uncle who owns a factory in Northeast Ohio. I saw him over the summer and this is easily the number one issue affecting his day to day operations. He showed me a few security camera videos of people coming to work high and literally going crazy, and then a video of someone who had arrived for a job interview, but just sat in the lobby dazed and unresponsive to commands to leave. The videos were shocking, people were like zombies. He can't find people to hire, and he can't keep the people he has, if they don't overdose at work, they overdose at home. I knew it was an issue, but didn't know it was the main issue facing American industry.

rjbwork 9y ago
Do you know how much he is offering to pay entry-level employees?
- jefe_ 9y ago
  I do not unfortunately. I do think based on what he was describing he would have enough incentive to pay more if that were feasible and resulted in talent that prevented these issues.
  - jdc 9y ago
    Has he considered offering relocation?
    - lotsofpulp 9y ago
      Maybe by the time an employer offered enough compensation to create an incentive to move to northeast Ohio, the cost of the good might be so high that it would just be worth it to manufacture in China.
      - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
        Then perhaps we should do something about that economic loophole. If our country's employers can't provide a good, rising quality of life to its workers, then something needs to change.

RealityNow 9y ago

What's causing the opioid use? I'd imagine the causation goes both ways. Has anybody actually asked these people why they use opioids? Or is it just economists running statistical regressions from their ivory towers?

bitL 9y ago

Wow, didn't know that 1/5 of US guys IDGAFed on society. Must be quite hostile society to men when they can't find anything keeping them interested. I think that's close to rates in Soviet Union after collapse.

bagacrap 9y ago
Male participation didn't drop by 20%. Rather, 20% of the drop that has been experienced might be linked to opioids.
- bitL 9y ago
  Ah OK, got it. How big was the overall drop? I assume a lot less than 20%.
  - wnissen 9y ago
    The overall drop was from 66% of the population to 63% in the last 15 years. But really the drop was from 2007-2014. https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300061 https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300061 Basically an entire major metro area of people who would have worked but don't. The fraction of people on Social Security Disability is only up by 1%, so the other 2/3rds aren't bringing in money. Another way of looking at it is to say that in 2000 only 8% of "prime working age" males didn't have a job. By 2014 it was 11%. A relative increase of more than a third in less than a generation. The other interesting thing is that women's labor participation is also down. There was pretty much an unbroken increase going back to the 50s, and then around 2000 it started to drop. The thing is, the drop in percentage points (the total number of non-working people) is about the same for men and for women, as far as I can see. So I don't understand where the idea comes from that it's men who are getting hit particularly hard.

cubano 9y ago

I'd like to turn this around somewhat and find a study that shows just how many "productive", employed citizens are actually using prescribed opioids and ADD medicines (methamphetamines) that help them to work harder and longer hours, because my bet is that it would be at least a significant fraction. My point? Maybe just because someone is taking opioids, people shouldn't automatically label them as unhireable. People on suboxone and methadone would test positive for opioids as well...are these people also considered unhireable?

mycosis 9y ago

Funny how we've been protecting poppy fields in Afghanistan for 15 years. Probably just a coincidence.

pizza 9y ago
Oh honey America's role in Afghan poppy industry goes so much further back than 15 years ago. America built a dam in Afghanistan in the 1950s. The dam changed the soil conditions and what could grow in the region. It was found that opium would grow well in the conditions, which meant that people would grow it to provide food for their families. Then the Taliban started controlling the trade, and profited tidily, and expanded it significantly. Destroying the opium trade would likely just add to the misery, by now. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1997-03-29/news/1997088009_1_opium-poppy-helmand-river http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1997-03-29/news/1997088009_...

emodendroket 9y ago

I heard them talking about this on the radio and they were talking about how, supposedly, one of their problems is young people would rather become drug dealers than work in the factories because it pays so much better. But if that is really true (nothing was offered as proof except a factory manager's assertion, so it seems kind of dubious to me) it seems like the obvious solution is to pay more so that isn't the case.

theonemind 9y ago
I heard that drug dealing comes out to about minimum wage. They talked about in the Freakonomics book. http://articles.latimes.com/2005/apr/24/opinion/oe-dubner24 http://articles.latimes.com/2005/apr/24/opinion/oe-dubner24
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Depending on how reliable the hours are at one job than the other he might still be right. But yeah, most drug dealers aren't striking it rich and I doubt factory managers are particularly knowledgeable about the topic.
SadWebDeveloper 9y ago
Dealing drugs is high risk with relative low work, labor working is most of the times low risk and really high work. It's difficult to educate the population, specially those in the lower tier of society, about the dangers on drug dealing, America et al should legalize and regulate "hard" drugs like we do we with tobacco, alcohol and weed; it won't tackle drug use but will definitively lower the profit.
bjd2385 9y ago
Most factories in my area will start you off at less than $14/hr. Granted it's full time, but that's roughly less than $20k/yr after taxes, which is hardly enough to live on, let alone raise a family on. I worked for 6 months putting rolls of tape in a box for a smidgen over $10/hr. And at the end I walked out the door because there were no prospects of moving up. Most of the people I know have (single?) parents who are in the same boat, making it almost impossible to move out on their own. Plus, you need reliable transportation, and vehicles are expensive. For someone just getting out of high school it's likely not an option. Basically what I'm saying is, there are a lot of barriers that any employer would need to help overcome (wage being perhaps the biggest part) before you see any changes in this sector of society. No kid my age wants to be a drug dealer. I don't care who you are or how poor your home life was. I would much rather go to work, get a loan for a half-decent (or even somewhat nice) vehicle that'll last me a decade if I take care of it, have my own apartment so I can have a few friends or my girlfriend over, etc. I wouldn't say my generation is lazy. I just don't think factories or employers in general should require stable state of mind or hard work without paying enough to really make a difference in someone's life, i.e. enough to support a stable, independent way of life.

pasbesoin 9y ago

Or, the dropping of American men from the labor force (i.e. not by their choice nor volition) could explain x% of opiod use... Actually, this seems to be borne out be reporting of newer surveys and studies. Those in stable employment and social settings are less vulnerable to addiction. Even when they "experiment"; they have more reasons not to chase the experience down the rabbit hole. I've heard this specifically from several recent sources of reporting. Different shows and segments, largely on public radio. That's not to mention the growing media and public re-evaluation of addiction and its causes, treatments, remediations, and possible solutions -- alongside comparison with the increasingly obviously counter-productive and expensive "tough on crime" practices with respect to it -- now taking place in the U.S.

pow_pp_-1_v 9y ago

I just don't understand why politicians don't take this seriously[1]. A smart and savvy politician could build presidency reaching career if they spent time talking about this and trying to find solutions. [1] I could be wrong.

Mikeb85 9y ago

Pretty sure the drop in the labour force is the cause, and the opioid use the result.

micheljones 9y ago

The white male privilege.

lsc 9y ago

Interesting, because yeah, I think people who fall out of the workforce should often be considered a social or psychological problem rather than an economic problem. You are 'unemployed' if you have looked for work in the last month. I'm only exaggerating a little when I say I haven't gone more than a month without looking for work... ever, past the age of fourteen or so. Even when I was happy with my current gig. You are a 'discouraged worker' if you've looked for work in the last year. Year. A lot changes in a year. I personally do my best to interview at all of the top-tier silicon valley companies every year, because there's a lot of randomness in interviews, and I'm not completely unqualified, and getting a fte job at, say, netflix would net me a lot more than what I get as a contractor now, so I roll the dice. I can't imagine spending a year without looking for work. I mean, I'm not saying these people shouldn't be helped; it's just that if you want to work, but you think there are no jobs for you, the rational thing to do is to re-evaluate that belief periodically. My own perception is that demand for my own labor varies sharply, opportunities come and go in a very short period of time. If you find logging into dice and sending some emails once a month too difficult, you have some other problem; I'm no shrink, but it sounds like depression to me.... Which is actually reasonably treatable these days; really, getting you treatment for depression so you can get a job is probably an incredibly good return on my social-services tax dollar.

realitymensa 9y ago

There are a lot of assumptions at work here, (pardon the pun) the main basis of this ASSumption is based on invalid surveys, conducted online without any verification and or face to face interviews which are done in any valid scientific determination. Much like the flawed polls of the 2016 election cycle which proved to be problematic for the political predictions of the political process we now see a illogical jump to conclusions not found in valid scientific evidentiary procedures. Quote, "In the Paper published by Alan B Kruger he states that the focus of the paper is focus on the role of pain and pain medication in the lives of prime age men who are not in the labor force and prime age women who are not in the labor force and not primarily taking care of household responsibilities, because these groups express the greatest degree of distress and dissatisfaction with their lives. " According to the paper, what follows is apparently what constitutes science these days. To better understand the role of pain and pain medication in the life of prime age men who are neither working nor looking for work, I conducted a short online panel survey of 571 NLF prime men age 25-54 using an internet panel provided by Survey Sampling Inc, henceforth called the Princeton Pain Survey (PPS).20 That did an online survey of 571 persons and somehow they believe that this is real evidence? Additionally they state that Thus, on any given day, 31 percent of NLF prime age men take pain medication, most likely an opioid-based medication. And these figures likely understate the actual proportion of men taking prescription pain medication given the stigma and legal risk associated with reporting taking narcotics. Consider the statement contained in the quote above. most likely an opioid-based medication. Now excuse me but the word most likely does not belong in any kind of scientific document. Using an online form to gain information and then publish it as if it were valid is just ridiculous. I cannot begin to understand why a “Real Study” was not conducted. This paper while well meaning is in effect meaningless because of the lack of proper scientific investigation and procedures. Additionally the number of Men surveyed, is in itself not a sufficient number to accurately predict any type of medical evidence of prescription drug use as a mediator for the so called, Opioid Crisis. In effect what has happened here is that there has been no scientific distinction between deaths associated with multiple drug use and prescription pain medication use. Even The CDC admits that they did not separate prescription drug deaths from illegal IV drug use, (Heroin) There is a need to call this what it is. You can never expect to solve a problem when you are not willing to address what the problem actually is. The problem is multiple illegal drug use involving IV Heroin, street drugs where the contents of those drugs is unknown. Alcohol use along with multiple drug use most often is the common denominator for drug overdose deaths. How can anyone be expected to take this kind of nonsense seriously when the body of science as a whole "lumps" all conditions and all manner of drug induced deaths together and then "Label" it as a Crisis. This is simply the War on Drugs 2.0