Opioid use could account for 20% of decline in men’s labor force participation

If we entertain this hypothesis for a moment by assuming there is a causal relationship between lack of meaning / purpose and higher propensity to engage in degenerative behavior and severe drug use, it then begs the questions: what changed? Where did people derive meaning and purpose in society before? Where are they getting it now? Where are they likely to get it in the future?

Again, entertaining the hypothesis, it would follow that setting up more drug clinics is unlikely to solve the problem because people are unlikely to find meaning through the current format of drug rehabilitation. A better solution long term may be increased emphasis on psychological rehabilitation.

I don't have the answer to any of these questions and certainly wouldn't say religion is the only answer. There are alternative ways to accomplish this. For example: as a society we can try to reinstill a greater sense of dignity in labor and non-managerial service roles.

The question becomes - what are doctors elsewhere doing?

- Prescribing physiotherapy for e.g back pains, rather than meds?

Or

- prescribing other kinds of pain medication?

Or something else?

There is also a question of how many of these people had non-prescription addictions and simply switched to prescription drugs because it's convenient and doctors can be persuaded to prescribe.

Here in Europe I know many people (most?) who have been prescribed pain medication at some point, but no one who has had potent opioids outside of hospital. Typical pain med prescriptions are for higher-than-usual doses of non prescription drugs like paracetamol/ibuprofen and only in rare cases weaker synthetic opioids like tramadol.

Hydrocodone and similar opioids are typically only used for terminal cancer patients and are banned from general prescription. Methadone is used for treatment of heroin addiction though.

Of course explaining that by opioids alone would be balancing between a huge oversimplification and a plain lie, but at least opioids have been the biggest single factor.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation

The Century of Humiliation started them on a road of weakness that took several revolutions to figure out how to stop. Only with Deng Xiaoping in the 80s did China begin to find its stride, and only now are they starting to finally become a world power that the world needs to reckon with instead of ignore. Whatever you think of politics and philosophies, China is now considered a world power in a way it never has been before.

In the scheme of a 1000 years of history you could argue 1970 counts as only now perhaps.

https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/06/mis-ch...

The one thing that the US has consistently shown recently is for every state that has legalized or decriminalized/medicinal marijuana, opioid abuse and related deaths have plummeted, yet we have trump trying to crack down on this emerging trend.

So it's just more of say one thing but do another.