More statistical nonsense....

Not to be disrespectful but just because you have not had anybody that you know effected does not mean there is not an issue.
My wife is a nurse and works in a chemical dependency floor of a hospital, this crisis is real and people are dying a lot of them.
Big Pharma has pushed opiods for years and for a person who can become an addict it is a prescription for hell.
In my scouting den the guy I handed the reigns over to after my tenure was the lead nurse at a hospital in hagerstown Md when not being a navy corpsman. He said it was common to see the SAME person in the SAME day. narcan him/her up, send them home, get em back 6 hours later.

I know there is an oath medical people take, but er docs and ems people are the ones leading the charge to NOT hand out consequence free narcan...

on a personal side, my wifes brother was an addict - heavier than opioids. many a time his father, armed with nothing more than a bible, went into hamsterville (outside baltimore) to get him when he was on a week bender. he got cleaned up, ditched enabler wife #1 and got with a nicer girl who was a 'biker chick', meaning she did modelling for biker mags, bud light stuff....but the stereotype is true and she brought alcohol and pot use back into the household and became enabler 2. dont let anyone lie to you, every addict will tell you, pot is absolutely a gateway drug and it didnt take long for the craving to start. rather than go back, he started up his john deere in the garage, closed the doors and laid down on some blankets...his dad found him 5 hours later. he left a note that he didnt want to put the family thru that again so enabler #2 and their kid have to go it alone...

and on my side, I know I am going to bury my 26 year old niece. she always liked a joint here and there (there goes that gateway again) but after a while its not enough and eventually, her gf/wife etc introduced her to the needle. she gets clean, but never more for a year and bumps even harder the next time. I hate to do it, but on the rare occasions she is clean and comes over, we have to round up and hide, any and all pill bottles. my sister cannot do a damn thing about it....the parents always seem to get to this point of resignation...

to a person who is not an addict or have the right personality - it is unfathomable. you just dont understand, I know I dont and I admit, and I am a staunch opponent of consequence free use/abuse/rescue
 
I do not have an addictive personality, have tried a lot of things and have just said that was fun. But I did need back surgery for a ruptured disk. I was on opiod painkillers, I did not know at the time because it was before the current situation. I am fairly good with pain so was taking less than I was allowed. The day of the surgery the pain was gone, so I stopped taking the pills. I started to notice strange mental tension, paranoia. All of a sudden it hit me Withdrawal. I started taking the pills again and tapered down over the next 2 or 3 days. But it was a real eye opener how quickly you can become addicted.

Graham
 
The fact is that most people who smoke pot do not go on to heavier drugs but when you ad other substances to the mix like alcohol and tobacco the chances to try harder drugs increases dramatically.
 
I do not have an addictive personality, have tried a lot of things and have just said that was fun. But I did need back surgery for a ruptured disk. I was on opiod painkillers, I did not know at the time because it was before the current situation. I am fairly good with pain so was taking less than I was allowed. The day of the surgery the pain was gone, so I stopped taking the pills. I started to notice strange mental tension, paranoia. All of a sudden it hit me Withdrawal. I started taking the pills again and tapered down over the next 2 or 3 days. But it was a real eye opener how quickly you can become addicted.

Graham

This is the thing. No one wakes up one day and says, "You know what, I think I'll get addicted to opiods!" Just like no one wakes up and says, "Alcoholism sounds like a fun time!" Most people start out innocent enough, using it for some chronic pain, and the chemicals are addictive and some percentage of those people will get addicted, whether or not they're good people or bad people or somewhere in between. Some percentage will be voluntary use, but there's tons of people who take that slow slide into addiction and don't admit they have a problem until it's a real problem.

My wife's a doc and she's constantly dealing with drug seeking behavior from patients. The problem is real.
 
Funny how this thread started out as a criticism of journalism, but what people really want to talk about is opioids.

I see bad science reporting and bad use of statistics all the time. I once emailed a professor at the Mizzou Journalism school who hosts a weekly radio show on media, offering to come give a talk on science reporting, with real examples collected from the media. Alas, didn't get a response. Probably should cultivate some kind of a friendly relationship first, maybe I sounded like a know-it-all.

Anyhow, besides statistics, I see a lot of stories on science and the environment that leave major questions unasked, or an obvious player not interviewed.
 
I find statistics useful after boiling the BS out of the “report”.

70000 drug deaths + 30000 car accident deaths = 100000 deaths, per year.

Hmmm

Where is the “crisis” line?

Iraq war, 4497 US deaths
Afghanistan war, 2216 US deaths at last count, we are still at war there.
Vietnam war, 58209 US deaths.
Korean War, 54246 US deaths.


Seems like drugs and traffic are worse than war based on hard numbers.

Crisis?
The "crisis" is local for folks that have to deal with the side effects of overloaded social services, petty crime, and homeless addicts only focused on the next fix by any means necessary. Its real for those with former friends and family members in the death spiral of addiction to opioids and synthesized methamphetamine. It's a crisis for anyone with constant contact with it, not so much for others without.
 
Truthfully, allot of people die from opium, pharmaceuticals and chemicals, then if those families that have lost loved ones don’t get together and sue those responsible nothing will happen. No leading charge from a federal district attorney stopped doctors from prescribing opium to people that got into car accidents. Sixty-six percent of those that died from opium overdoses over the last six years were caused by prescription meds. Then how many people die early from taking too many prescription meds due to our medical industry. The method of statistical findings might be flawed but murder, car accidents, opium overdose and pharmaceuticals take millions of lives annually.
 
Funny how this thread started out as a criticism of journalism, but what people really want to talk about is opioids.

I see bad science reporting and bad use of statistics all the time. I once emailed a professor at the Mizzou Journalism school who hosts a weekly radio show on media, offering to come give a talk on science reporting, with real examples collected from the media. Alas, didn't get a response. Probably should cultivate some kind of a friendly relationship first, maybe I sounded like a know-it-all.

Anyhow, besides statistics, I see a lot of stories on science and the environment that leave major questions unasked, or an obvious player not interviewed.

When I first started grad school after working professionally for a few years, I sent an email to the professor who ran the department's senior design course offering to help out as someone who'd recently been deeply involved in the actual design/build process on a multi-billion dollar project (I mentioned the project by name then, not by value.) When I was in undergrad our engineering department brought in as many industry folks as possible to critique and comment on our senior design projects, and as a result we regularly won the competitions we entered them into, and not a few of us found jobs via people we met during those design reviews. So I thought maybe I could be part of a similar effort at my new school.

Didn't even get an email reply. Some people just don't want you to mess with their status quo I guess.
 
Nobody's had a root canal and gotten a scrip for some Tylenol #3s?

Hell, I got Vicodin when I got my wisdom teeth out. I took two or three the first two days or so and I thought I'd never have a BM again in my life. I'll never take more than one dose in a row again, that's for sure.
 
Nobody's had a root canal and gotten a scrip for some Tylenol #3s?
Luckily I've never had a root canal but I'd take an oxy without a moments hesitation if it hurt bad enough.
Most of the members of my family cannot tolerate codeine without heaving their guts:eek2:
 
22 per 100,000 deaths by drug overdose(standardized)
db329_fig3.png
 
This crisis is not so much in the numbers of deaths, but also in the number of addictions and non-fatal overdoses, and how fast all of those figures are increasing.

From drugabuse.gov:
  • Opioid overdoses increased 30 percent from July 2016 through September 2017 in 52 areas in 45 states .
  • The Midwestern region saw opioid overdoses increase 70 percent from July 2016 through September 2017.
  • Opioid overdoses in large cities increased by 54 percent in 16 states.
Year-old data but I can't imagine it's gotten much better.
 
My personal experience with meth has been the related litter on the sides of our roads, antihistamine packets, propane cylinders and Colman fuel cans, duct tape wrapped plastic bottles, that sort of stuff. Went from none to everywhere and back to not much at all in the last several years. I'd see it close up out walking our rescue dogs. Dunno what is happening with that these days, but hardly see much lately.
 
They went from a complicated method of making it that required basically a small lab, to a 'shake and bake' method in one bottle that could cook in a car trunk while you drive around. That was several years ago. Not sure what's going on now.
 
They went from a complicated method of making it that required basically a small lab, to a 'shake and bake' method in one bottle that could cook in a car trunk while you drive around. That was several years ago. Not sure what's going on now.
I think stealth imports and restrictions on pseudoephederine may be what happened to domestic production.
 
@quaddriver: Maybe you're missing the point. Could they just be saying that opioid users stand a greater chance of being killed by opioids than drivers stand of getting killed in an MVA? In other words, driving a car is statistically safer than using opioids, just as driving a car is statistically safer than being a coal miner. You and I will never be coal miners, but that doesn't change the fact that one is more dangerous than the other.

Stated differently, are they saying that if 100 people use opioids daily for a year, and 100 people drive x miles daily in a car for a year, that you'll have fewer living opioid users at the end of the year? That would make sense to me.

Speaking of statistics, did you know that if your parents didn't have children, odds are you won't either?

[EDITED for clarity]
 
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Yes, the statistics in the source are pretty much self-explanatory without reading into them what isn't there.
 
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