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The lucrative business of America’s opioid crisis

nytimes.com

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Re: The lucrative business of America’s opioid crisis

#201

Post by specialist »

StreamBright wrote: post #57
unabst wrote: post #52

Capitalism is sinister like this. It doesn't intentionally do it, because capitalism isn't a person, but when everything is monetized by our creative entrepreneurs, it grows; our problems being no exception. Once someone makes money, they want more of it. Capitalism demands more of it. And we stretch every line of the law, even cross it, just to get more from where that came from. Unfortunately one person suppressing…

Actually the opposite. Government regulations outlaw cheap non-dangerous alternatives (like cannabis) and create a monopoly by granting patents to a single entity. https://qz.com/1125690/big-pharma-is-taking-advantage-of-pat... http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/outdated-treatments-and-dr... The solution is to make cannabis legal for everybody in every state for medical use and since it cannot be patented there will b…

Because regulatory capture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

When you say "government", I hear "of the people, by the people, for the people".

When you say "regulation", I hear "market protections", eg property rights, fair & impartial courts, rule of law. In other words, no regulation means no market.

My sole notion (so far) for a more fair society is some sort of balance of power, modeled after our constitution (executive vs legislative vs courts), where regulations somehow have a third pillar. So instead of just us vs them, like government vs business, there's a third seat at the table. Like maybe producers, consumers & regulators, where the consumers have equal voice.

Re: The lucrative business of America’s opioid crisis

#202

Post by DoreenMichele »

microcolonel wrote: post #199
DoreenMichele wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my mind, this is a reasonable collection of related writings on the topic by me: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/ir2.html But I don't know that it will seem pertinent to you. So let me try to give you a nutshell version: Average size of new homes in the US has more than doubled since the 1950s. Meanwhile, average number of occupants has dropped. We tore down up to 80 percent of SROs, a low cost form of h…

> If 20 percent or more of your income is eaten by healthcare and 50 percent or more is eaten by housing costs, life will be pretty damn bleak and UBI won't solve it. This likely is a large factor in things like the opioid crisis and rising suicide rates. Figures do seem to indicate an increase between 2001 and 2009 in health care spending as a percentage of income, but isn't most of this a difference in real after-t…

Re why were SROs torn down and not rebuilt (also my writing):

http://projectsro.blogspot.com/p/about.html

I'm not sure what your point is about healthcare costs. People at the bottom are being pinched. As it gets gradually worse, it forces more people into dire straits.

Re: The lucrative business of America’s opioid crisis

#203

Post by QAPereo »

ams6110 wrote: post #130
QAPereo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing about capitalism demands an ugly lack of proper legislation, regulation, and enforcement. I would not like to write off capitalism on the basis of a rigged system that just uses the name for ideological purposes.

Indeed, rule of law is essential. As is some level of regulation because history has shown that some people are bad actors. The challenge of regulation is how to control the tendency of its bureaucracies to grow and become burdensome.

Balance is key, and difficult, and will always tend to fall out of balance under external influences. All too often though I feel that the problem is framed as "too hard" you know? It is not too hard, if more people were on board and made it a priority. Sadly history seems to indicate that it will take a lot for that to happen, if it does. Without popular support and voter oversight, government becomes toxic, but without government support and oversight, things fall apart.

Re: The lucrative business of America’s opioid crisis

#204

Post by agumonkey »

cpursley wrote: post #136
agumonkey wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug and free market seems like a nasty bet IMO; too much money, too much immaturity and decrease of rationality. My bet is that most 80% of the time it will degenerate into gangs and cartels.

I don't understand. What purpose would gangs/cartels serve if drugs were brought into the general legal framework?

I spoke to fast, you and your sibling were right.

Re: The lucrative business of America’s opioid crisis

#205

Post by nwah1 »

Buge wrote: post #186
nwah1 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't criticizing the act of short selling itself. I was criticizing the concept of an individual writing what amounts to a hit piece that was later retracted, and yet profiting off it despite the fact. Or, in the first case, alleging that a company led to the death of an individual, when later the charge of murder was dropped. It piqued my interest that in both cases, the meat of his allegations are at least high…

Just because a murder charge was dropped, doesn't mean that a murder didn't happen. The justice system doesn't convict 100% of murderers. This is illustrated in the quote "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"

They charged the company with murder, which is a first for the legal system. That concept barely makes sense. Who at the company was at fault, and why? The company itself is a legal fiction.

Re: The lucrative business of America’s opioid crisis

#206

Post by Broken_Hippo »

ams6110 wrote: post #129
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, dude. If you are talking of using camnnabis for medical use, I'm gonna want a dosage guideline and strength/purity promises. I'm pretty sure for medical use, it will more closely resemble ibuprofen or cough medicine if it is without prescription. With prescription it'll be more like generics. It might still be a monopoly, since these drugs have to go through all the FDA testing. Heck, if you want fluori…

It's a freaking plant. Why should it be more regulated than parsley?

For the same reasons we want tobacco regulated, alcohol regulated, some food regulated, and drugs regulated. The fact is that it isn't parsley, nor does it have similar effect on our body. While consuming too much might not kill you, getting to work and finding that your supposedly non-high-bringing cannabis-based pain reliever certainly made you high isn't the sort of thing one wants to find. Alternatively for recreational use, I want what the thing says on the package and would be horribly angry if I wound up with the other dude's non-high-bringing smoke. I want my "weaker" strain to be just that, just like I'd not appreciate finding out my beer/wine/whiskey is stronger than is on the package.

Re: The lucrative business of America’s opioid crisis

#207

Post by zoul »

rand_r wrote: post #197
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i am a foreigner trying to understand this issue: why don't they just stop prescribing opium based pain killers to the general public and limit them to cancer patients - like they do in the rest of the world, wouldn't that scale down the crisis? How did the problem get this large? Even Imperial China went to war when Britain started pushing Opium to the public, why wasn't this whole thing stopped much earlier?

Opium-based pain killers are the most reliable way to ease pain without causing organ damage in the near term. Drugs like Advil and Tylenol cause organ damage even at small doses and are thus unusable for extreme pain. Opiates are used the world over for pain relief, not just for cancer patients. If we had a way to ease pain with something non-addictive that didn’t cause immediate organ damage that would be great.

The key difference is the easy availability in the US. It seems to me that the GPs are eager to prescribe you some opiates, whereas here in the Czech Republic they would have to go through quite a lot red tape to do that. Which, given the potential harm, seems like a good idea. (Even though we do have some problems with opiates not being used often enough. But compared to the US situation that’s a great problem to have.)

Re: The lucrative business of America’s opioid crisis

#208

Post by vanderZwan »

euroclydon wrote: post #166
rayiner wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also suffer internal transaction costs by having to deal with 51 different legal systems.

And what to do about it? Most conservatives want smaller federal government, which reduces the aggregate size and expenditure for government, but exacerbates fragmentation. On the other hand, progressives want larger federal government, which introduces standardizing layers, but spends way more on aggregate government.

> smaller federal government

> larger federal government

I find both of these positions frustratingly vague, and I'm eager to blame them for making the problem appear intractable. They're perfectly intuitive enough to make people have a gut-feeling for what it means without actually thinking about what it means, and in that sense avoid actually debating that, which would be productive.

What does "large" and "small" even mean? Governments are complex social/cultural/legal systems, no matter what the "size". I'm pretty sure waterbed theory applies here[0].

(This is not a critique of your post, but about the US discourse surrounding this in general. At least how it comes across to me as a European)

[0] "the observation, ascribed to Larry Wall, that some systems, such as human and computer languages, contain a minimum amount of complexity, and that attempting to "push down" the complexity of such a system in one place will invariably cause complexity to "pop up" elsewhere.",

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterbed_theory

Re: The lucrative business of America’s opioid crisis

#209

Post by vanderZwan »

kbenson wrote: post #102
vanderZwan wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually the opposite. Government regulations... I'm from the Netherlands so you won't hear me disagree with the argument that criminalizing cannabis and drugs is not the solution[0]. Having said that, the typical undertone on HN of "regulation is bad by definition" really irks me. I can imagine that if the only perspective one has is a dysfunctional government, one might think that, but please take a look abroad a…

> Having said that, the typical undertone on HN of "regulation is bad by definition" really irks me. I think you just notice that undertone more because of your predisposition. I notice just as many pro regulation as anti regulation comments, and I think of myself as a capitalism moderate (since there are negative externalities that do not get included in the price, regulations act as corrective measures to move mark…

The empirical evidence speaks in your favor, since I fully expected my remark to be downed, but instead now see a lot of supportive votes.

Mea culpa, I blame negativity bias[0]. US-centric thinking annoys me in a "don't be short-sighted" way (Eurocentric thinking too, but I have more blind spots there), and as a European, the "neutral" position for regulation is probably far more on the regulation side of things (just like how the "neutral" political leaning being very left compared to the US, for that matter).

I also suspect that hathawsh comment elsewhere is right about discourse taking more extreme positions in general, although I doubt the polarization in the US is the lone cause. Stronger opinions are always more vocal, so it is the nature of the internet, and public discourse in general to show apparent extremities within public opinion[1].

[0] perception bias where negative experiences, which includes annoyances, are given more weight, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias

[1] https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2939

Re: The lucrative business of America’s opioid crisis

#210

Post by vanderZwan »

jacob019 wrote: post #83
vanderZwan wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually the opposite. Government regulations... I'm from the Netherlands so you won't hear me disagree with the argument that criminalizing cannabis and drugs is not the solution[0]. Having said that, the typical undertone on HN of "regulation is bad by definition" really irks me. I can imagine that if the only perspective one has is a dysfunctional government, one might think that, but please take a look abroad a…

I've always observed that HN leans pro-regulation.

As I commented elsewhere, I got a lot of upvotes for complaining about the deregulation-bias, which supports your observation.
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