"Depending who you ask, further restricting prescription opioids could actually be driving mortality up even higher by pushing people to the contaminated street market."
The other side of the argument is that restricting prescription opioid prescribing decreases the overdose rate, which is not at all how the history of this has played out. Overdose rates climbed as more prescriptions were written up to 2012 (is that surprising?). Since then, we've reduced prescribing to 1992 levels while the overdose rate skyrocketed.
I really think anyone taking that side of the argument has such strong moral investments in prohibition that they can't be taken seriously. Can anyone give me a counterexample?
So there’s more arguments involved than that, primarily through, imo, round about reasoning and feedback loop type assumptions into the epidemiology of the crisis. There are people who say restricting Rx opioids will, in the long run (say 10 years+) will result in fewer people exposed to opioids and that means fewer cases of addiction, etc. Personally, I think that argument has some flawed ideas built into it and doesn’t accurately represent how street opioid initiation plays out. My .2 cents
I suppose that's at least an argument. The question is, is it falsifiable? We can always argue that the relationship may go one way *now*, it might reverse in ten years if we keep cutting prescribing.
Also, it would be pretty sweet if we on the legalization side could say "You'll see the benefits in ten years" and just have people say "OK!" and give us the keys to the policy car for a decade.
ha, yeah... it's pretty mind numbing to see which policies and ideas need evidence and strong outcomes right away and which ones don't, i.e. cutting opioid prescribing and restricting prescriptions doesn't cost the state/government, etc. anything, it's a technocratic dream to point to charts that show prescribing rates going down and hail it as a success, a step in the right direction that will one day "pay off" etc. but alas, hello choir
"Depending who you ask, further restricting prescription opioids could actually be driving mortality up even higher by pushing people to the contaminated street market."
The other side of the argument is that restricting prescription opioid prescribing decreases the overdose rate, which is not at all how the history of this has played out. Overdose rates climbed as more prescriptions were written up to 2012 (is that surprising?). Since then, we've reduced prescribing to 1992 levels while the overdose rate skyrocketed.
I really think anyone taking that side of the argument has such strong moral investments in prohibition that they can't be taken seriously. Can anyone give me a counterexample?
So there’s more arguments involved than that, primarily through, imo, round about reasoning and feedback loop type assumptions into the epidemiology of the crisis. There are people who say restricting Rx opioids will, in the long run (say 10 years+) will result in fewer people exposed to opioids and that means fewer cases of addiction, etc. Personally, I think that argument has some flawed ideas built into it and doesn’t accurately represent how street opioid initiation plays out. My .2 cents
I suppose that's at least an argument. The question is, is it falsifiable? We can always argue that the relationship may go one way *now*, it might reverse in ten years if we keep cutting prescribing.
Also, it would be pretty sweet if we on the legalization side could say "You'll see the benefits in ten years" and just have people say "OK!" and give us the keys to the policy car for a decade.
ha, yeah... it's pretty mind numbing to see which policies and ideas need evidence and strong outcomes right away and which ones don't, i.e. cutting opioid prescribing and restricting prescriptions doesn't cost the state/government, etc. anything, it's a technocratic dream to point to charts that show prescribing rates going down and hail it as a success, a step in the right direction that will one day "pay off" etc. but alas, hello choir