Sullivan starts out highlighting how America is exceptionally afflicted by opioid abuse, but goes on to unconvincingly weave a bunch of unexceptional factors in

Sullivan starts out highlighting how America is exceptionally afflicted by opioid abuse, but goes on to unconvincingly weave a bunch of unexceptional factors into his explanation. Smartphones, TV, video games, online porn: they're in every developed country. They can't be the explanation for what's different about America. Decline of religiously-derived meaning? Most developed countries' populations place less importance on religion than Americans. Factory jobs squeezed by automation and cheap offshore labor? Canadian manufacturers have access to the same robots as American firms, and Canada has been a member of the World Trade Organization as long as the US has. Inter-temporal comparisons also show that it doesn't make sense to blame the American opioid crisis on the decline of manufacturing jobs. The number of American manufacturing jobs peaked in the 1970s. "Rust belt" became a common term in the 1980s. But the opioid crisis is much more recent.