Interesting that the article barely covers the reason for the decline of life expectancy. Instead he goes on a very long tangent about the second amendment. Murder rates are continuing to decrease, so the murder rate has nothing to do with the decrease in life expectancy.

It could be as simple as overprescription of them and aggressive marketing and sales by manufacturers.

This article goes into the actual statistics which are impacting the life expectancy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-li...

Chomsky asserts (without evidence) that opioid abuse is a disease of despair and that it is a result of unemployment and the wealth gap. He doesnt provide any data or citations demonstrating this link.

It seems that it is more likely that opioids became over prescribed as a result of aggressive marketing and sales by pharmaceutical manufacturers. Ironically the factor protecting nonwhite communities from opioid addiction is the lack of health insurance to meet with doctors that can prescribe them.

This paper supports prescription as the possible underlying cause.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

<<Conclusions and Relevance The race/ethnicity and income pattern of opioid overdoses mirrored prescription rates, suggesting that differential exposure to opioids via the health care system may have induced the large, observed racial/ethnic gradient in the opioid epidemic. Across drug categories, controlled medications were much more likely to be prescribed to individuals living in majority-white areas. These discrepancies may have shielded nonwhite communities from the brunt of the prescription opioid epidemic but also represent disparities in treatment and access to all medications.>>