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Opioid use could account for 20% of decline in men’s labor force participation
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- StudentStuff 9y agoWhy do we continue to demonize those that use prescription pain meds? In doing so, we force them out of mainstream society, hurting our economy and communities in the process.
- DanBC 9y agoWe're not demonising people who use the meds, we're demonising the system that irresponsibly markets and prescribes those meds, which fails to properly treat long term pain, and removes people from the workforce and society, and creates addicts.
- Havoc 9y agoIt's not a use problem its an abuse problem.
- sametmax 9y agoIt's a mater of scale. This number of magnitude can only mean 2 things: - a lot of those people do not need to take those products. Then we have an substance abuse problem. - a lot of those people DO need to take them. Then we have a public health problem. In both cases, ouch.
- mcbits 9y agoSubstance abuse isn't inherently immoral or ungodlike or whatever. In some cases it can cause harm. Causing harm is a problem at individual and societal levels. Public policy should aim to reduce harm, but our drug policies almost all aim to inflict multiple forms of devastating harm to scare or crush addicts into sobriety. Worse, it doesn't even solve the faux "problem" of substance abuse.
- someonewhocar3s 9y agoGood job ignoring how some drugs really do f people up. The biggest problem with drugs is that we call them "drugs" and then make very specific claims about "drugs". It's molecules people, effects vary wildly!
- sametmax 9y agoYou confuse "abuse" and "consumption". "abuse" assumes there is harm.
- mcbits 9y agoAbuse is any use that is unacceptable to those making the determination. With illegal and prescription drugs, that's usually any recreational use at all. Substitute "recreational use" for "abuse" if it makes you feel better about the semantics. Then we can dissect the finer points of "recreational". An LEO told me his use of wine wasn't recreational because he only used it socially, not for the effects, whereas recreational drug users are always using it for the effects.
- apatters 9y agoI didn't get the impression that the article was demonizing people who use meds at all. Did you?
- louithethrid 9y agoDeep within every human resides the thought "If i would run this place then-" which makes for great violations of the libertys of others and loud yelling, if others do the same to the majestic creature that is oneself.
- alkonaut 9y agoHow much is this due to people really needing these prescriptions, and then aren't informed or helped quit, and how much is this due to plain overprescription? It should be pretty easy to compare with any comparable country to see what the difference in opioid prescription is.
- DanBC 9y agoThe US prescribes far more opioids than any other country. http://www.painpolicy.wisc.edu/opioid-consumption-data http://www.painpolicy.wisc.edu/opioid-consumption-data Here we see the comparison with the AMRO zone (the Americas) which shows the US and Canada prescribe a lot more opioids than any other country in the Americas. And here we compare AMRO to EURO: http://imgur.com/a/bb4wD http://imgur.com/a/bb4wD https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/15/americans-use-far-more-opioids-than-anyone-else-in-the-world/?utm_term=.b5705cca9112 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/15/ameri... > And what it finds about the United States is jaw-dropping: Even when the list is restricted to the top 25 heaviest consuming countries, the United States outpaces them all in opioid use. > For example, Americans are prescribed about six times as many opioids per capita as are citizens of Portugal and France, even though those countries offer far easier access to health care. The largest disparity noted in the U.N. report concerns hydrocodone: Americans consume more than 99 percent of the world’s supply of this opioid.
- 90s-socal-kid 9y agoIn many countries you don't need a scrip to buy low grade opioids like codeine. That will inflate somewhat the US number.
- DanBC 9y agoThis isn't counting prescriptions. > These data represent the amounts of opioids distributed legally in a country for medical and scientific purposes to those healthcare institutions and programs that are licensed to dispense to patients, such as hospitals, nursing homes, pharmacies, hospices and palliative care programs. Consumption does not refer to the amounts dispensed to, or used by, patients, but rather to amounts distributed to the retail level.
- tim333 9y agoRelated https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15192829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15192829 (256 comments)
- mirimir 9y agoYes, and "Opioid Use Could Explain 20% of the Drop in American Men from Labor Force" would be a much more accurate title for this item. > The increase in opioid prescriptions from 1999 to 2015 could account for about 20 percent of the observed decline in men’s labor force participation (LFP) during that same period.
- DanielBMarkham 9y agoThis title is whack. Here's the quote from the article: "...In earlier research presented at the Boston Fed in 2016, Krueger found that nearly half of prime age men who are not in the labor force take pain medication on a daily basis, and that two-thirds of those men—or about 2 million—take prescription pain medication on a daily basis..." I take a baby aspirin every morning, so I would qualify as somebody taking pain medication daily. I believe the opiod problem in the U.S. is an extremely serious thing, therefore we need to be very careful about what kinds of information we stick in our heads regarding it. There's a ton of correlation here, things like "Over the last 15 years, LFP fell more in counties where more opioids were prescribed" Well, okay. If more people are being injured and are in pain, they would get medication, right? And therefore there would be less people in the workforce. Because people are on pain meds doesn't mean that's keeping them from work. It might mean that things that keep you from work significantly involve pain. I have no intention of trashing the article. It's worth reading. I would simply advise caution in jumping to conclusions. My opinion is that mankind is finally creating the perfect world (relatively speaking compared to all of history): plenty of food and shelter. The internet and gaming means you'll never be bored. Throw in a little pharmacological assistance for any pain, boredom, ennui, depression, or loneliness you're feeling, and what more could you want? But that's rampant speculation, which I readily admit. I worry about articles that encourage reader speculation without explicitly calling it out.
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- misja111 9y agoI found that earlier research article: https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/economic/conf/great-recovery-2016/Alan-B-Krueger.pdf https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/economic/conf/gr...
- DanBC 9y ago> Nearly half of prime age NLF men take pain medication on a daily basis, and in nearly two-thirds of cases they take prescription pain medication
- payne92 9y agoAn important point of clarity: according to the article, 2/3rds of those men taking opiods (and not in the labor force) are taking prescription pain medicine. That seems consistent, since severe pain generally prevents or limits work.
- ComputerGuru 9y agoPresumably you meant with a prescription? Prescription medication is a term for drugs that can/would be prescribed, regardless how they were obtained.
- lefstathiou 9y agoJust finished a thought provoking book on my flight this afternoon titled Man's Search for Meaning which may shed light on potential underlying causes of this crisis. Interesting that decades ago psychologists observed broad differences in the psychological "health" of men living in the US versus Europe for example that potentially left them more susceptible to physiologically degenerative ailments like depression, suicide and drug addiction. I think that one of the defining challenges of our life time will be to figure out a way to broadly replace in society the sense of purpose and meaning one derives from religion and spirituality in an increasingly secularized world.
- rebuilder 9y agoBut isn't Europe much more secular than the USA?
- anovikov 9y agoYes and that's probably the explanations! European men went through this 2-3 generations ago, and then, they were too busy with the nasty stuff happening back then in Europe.
- lefstathiou 9y agoParts are and parts are definitely not (we are after all comparing continents here). I don't believe secularism is the only consideration at play. The question(s) I am noodling on (for myself and broadly) is: do these young men have a sense of purpose and meaning in their lives and if not, is that contributing in a meaningful way to their willingness to engage in degenerative behaviors / drug use? If we entertain this hypothesis for a moment by assuming there is a causal relationship between lack of meaning / purpose and higher propensity to engage in degenerative behavior and severe drug use, it then begs the questions: what changed? Where did people derive meaning and purpose in society before? Where are they getting it now? Where are they likely to get it in the future? Again, entertaining the hypothesis, it would follow that setting up more drug clinics is unlikely to solve the problem because people are unlikely to find meaning through the current format of drug rehabilitation. A better solution long term may be increased emphasis on psychological rehabilitation. I don't have the answer to any of these questions and certainly wouldn't say religion is the only answer. There are alternative ways to accomplish this. For example: as a society we can try to reinstill a greater sense of dignity in labor and non-managerial service roles.
- apatters 9y agoThis title is not in line with HN guidelines: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait." I would like to ask the OP to refrain from posting provocative titles which don't comply with the guidelines. I get that the issue is serious but all that title did was alarm me and waste my time.
- mirimir 9y agoYes! And it's based on a misreading of the article.
- snovv_crash 9y agoThe Opium Wars brought China to its knees, from which it is only now recovering. I'm surprised that the leaders of the US aren't more worried about this.
- mac01021 9y agoOnly now? Can you elaborate?
- anovikov 9y agoProbably he meant that China went from being a top #1 economy in the world by a huge margin when the opioid epidemic began there, and it has just recently became #1 again, so far by a small margin. That sounds about right. They lost ca. 200 years. Of course explaining that by opioids alone would be balancing between a huge oversimplification and a plain lie, but at least opioids have been the biggest single factor.
- Banthum 9y agoJust because they fell in the rankings doesn't mean they actually lost anything. E.g. Another way for a country to lose the #1 economy spot is for it to simply stay the same while other nations (e.g. Europe in this case) make huge advances. Being fair, a few other things happened in there too. I don't think that during the communists' Cultural Revolution the country was primarily being held back by opiod abuse.
- anovikov 9y agoIn a way it was. Majority of population were just off the drugs, and most kids who became 'red guards' - they were born in China's darkest days - had prenatal drug problem so they were kinda mentally impaired which caused most or all that shit. If such a relatively innocent thing as inhaling lead vapours from suddenly omnipresent cars in 1960s and 1970s could cause a 1980s-1990s crime wave in the U.S., it is easy to see what putting whole nation on opioids could do with the next generation.
- narrator 9y agoI think the thing that annoys me about modern medical trends such as the enormous rise in obesity, Alzheimer's, autism and chronic pain and ensuing opiod abuse is the shoulder shrugging by the medical establishment as to the cause. Any meaningful change for the worse in medical statistics over time seems to be uninteresting to most of the medical community and is almost always ascribed to "better reporting" or moral failings of the patient.
- spodek 9y ago> Prime age men who are out of the labor force, however, report less happiness and more sadness during their days than do unemployed men, although they evaluate their lives in general more highly than unemployed men. Prime age and older women who are out of the labor force report emotional well-being and life evaluations in general that are about on par with employed women the same age Tens of millions of men are suffering in a way that women aren't. It seems when something affects the sexes differently society treats it as gender issue and seeks to help women specifically. There appear to be specific gender issues here hurting men more. I'd hypothesize unequal expectations. Is this an issue to look at from a gendered perspective?