The study is here:
Fuckin' NYT. Thanks for linking to the study. It pretty clearly shows that the rise in mortality is drug overdoses and suicides, primarily among the 25-44 population. Good heavens whyever for?
Death rates are actually improving among children and older Americans, Dr. Woolf noted, perhaps because they may have more reliable health care — Medicaid for many children and Medicare for older people.
Where there is evidence of knowingly pushed opioids beyond sensible numbers by executives, there should be prosecutions, and maximum penalties sought. We need to treat white-collar crime far more seriously. White collar crime is particularly insidious, because rather than working around our systems and infrastructure, it perverts and leverages it to out-sized effect.
It's more than Purdue, though. Remove agency and security and substance abuse and reckless behavior increase. That's Psych 101. We'll never know to any degree of certainty that higher prosperity would have blunted the opioid crisis but we can look to historical analogues:
