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Comment by loufe | Hacker News Reader

What makes you say "over-villified"? They are a very dangerous yet effective tool, true. However, Western society is still reeling from the opiod crisis. I have a hard time feeling like it's over-villified, from my perspective it is only now feeling appropriately villified.

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> What makes you say "over-villified"?

This article, of course. The obsession with investigating every possible company that has ever been remotely associated with the Sacklers. Etc.

> Tactics used to persuade U.S. doctors that potent painkillers could be safely prescribed have been used abroad, an investigation shows.

Well we’re just recovering from a phase where they were overprescribed so there’s a natural overvilification. Lots of people that do need opioids for their pain are now getting refused.

They've been underprescribed for probably a decade now. We started overcorrecting long, long ago.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6626a4.htm#:~:text=....

> First, average daily MME per prescription decreased after 2010, both nationwide and in most counties. The largest decreases occurred from 2010 to 2012, following publication of two national guidelines defining high-dose opioid prescribing as >200 MME/day (15,16). ... Nationally, opioid prescribing rates leveled off from 2010 to 2012, and then decreased by 13.1% from 2012 to 2015. ... This pattern, along with the trends in overall numbers of opioid prescriptions, might reflect fewer patients initiated on opioid therapy after 2012...

Has it really been that long? It feels like the opioid epidemic was not that long ago.

Well, ten years is both a long time and not that long, you know? But yes US prescriptions peaked in ~2012.

Opioid dependency lags prescription rates pretty significantly - it can take years before someone is in a position to shake the addiction.

it got started with massive overprescription of opioids in the 2000s, then the government belatedly cracked down on that, and a lot of people who got addicted switched to street drugs, which is when the crisis became obvious to the public.

'Western society' might be a stretch.

Agreed

The United States. That's apparently all of Western society now according to the gp comment.

Canada had a heroin problem for a while. Is that still a thing? And you really don't hear much about European countries having an opioid crisis. Am I just not getting my news from the right places?

They did, they were actually the dealers, even going to war so they could keep selling it to parts of asia [1], just was a long time ago.

There's also a reason the movie Trainspotting is set where it is.

Given the massive reduction in harvesting of opium plants in Afghanistan recently, it does look like there are going to be issues [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars

[2] https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-heroin-alternatives-n...

It's easier on people emotionally to blame the drug rather than blame the person.

It doesn’t sound like you’re familiar with the case and why it’s being brought against Purdue Pharma. There is a whole lot more to this than “the drug” and “the person”.

I watched the Netflix series Painkiller five times in a row. I watched the entire Sackler deposition. My heart goes out to the people who have lost loved ones. I simply disagree with the anger and outrage.

When highly addictive drugs with rapidly diminishing efficacy are readily prescribed for the treatment of chronic pain, people should absolutely be blamed - but not the patients.

What is the alternative?

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