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Comment by hollerith | Hacker News Reader

>people die in large numbers from overdoses from prescription opiates too

What's your evidence for this?

Well, i'm a doctor so part of this is an argument from authority. But arguments from authority are stupid. So here are some references:

[0] - CDC report describing epidemic in prescription opiate deaths

[1] - NIH report showing overdose deaths. the relevant stats: Since 2001, prescription opiate deaths have risen from 6000 to around 16,000. Over the same period, heroin overdoses went from 2,000 to 8,000. This data is to 2013. So there is a clear problem, and in fact prescription opiates cause significantly more deaths than heroin.

[2] - a report from closer to (my) home and region of practice detailing increases in prescription drug use in Australia and increase in opiate-related deaths secondary to this

[0] http://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/overdose.html

[1] http://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/ov...

[2] https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2011/195/5/prescription-opioi...

"Prescription drug abuse and addiction kill far more people in the U.S. every year than all illegal drugs combined."

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wicked-deeds/201404/pre...

This is a meaningless argument if you don't normalize for usage rates. Many times more people are on legal drugs than illegal drugs. I doubt OxyContin kills a higher percentage of its users than heroin.

Also surveillance bias is a problem in these data.

Also, these data include things like acetaminophen overdoses (estimates run from 100 to 1000 deaths per year).

Those overdoses could still be secondary to opioid addiction; there are lots of APAP/hydrocodone and APAP/oxycodone out there.

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