It turns out that the people who are dying aren't dying from prescribed medication or because they got hooked on prescribed medication and then turned to illegal drugs.
A study of opioid related deaths in Massachusetts shows that the #FakeNews media narrative isn't in fact correct.
Only 16.8% of the people whose death's are part of the opioid epidemic had prescriptions for opioids when they died. But 61.4% had heroin and 45.3% hand fentanyl in their blood. Also opioids weren't generally detected in the blood of these victims of the opioid epidemic.
It's not Big Pharma pushing profits by selling prescription drugs that's killing these poor people it's old fashioned drug dealers.
Back in 2015 a national survey on drug use found that about 2% of Americans who used prescribed opioids had a "opioid use disorder" which covers more than addiction. That might seem high but 9% of people who had an alcoholic drink in the last year had an "alcohol use disorder".
Clearly as used today in America by responsible physicians opioids aren't causing any sort of epidemic.
A 2018 study which looked at medical records found that about 1% of the people who took pain pills after surgery misused them.
This doesn't mean that we should start popping an oxy every morning but it does mean that if we want to help the victims of drug addiction attacking Big Pharma isn't the right process.
Perhaps we should do what Trump is doing and demand that China stop sending huge amounts of fentanyl to the US. But as with CO2 production and plastic in the ocean the left seems singularly uninterested in castigating Communist China in any way.
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