[gragas]

>What caused it, why it is more than in other parts of the world and why so many painkillers?

>Is it cultural?

That's actually a really common misconception on HN. The United States ranks 27th among countries which abuse opiates, [1] behind many first-world countries like the UK, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Ireland, and Russia, to name a few.

What's the cause? A lot of HNers like to pin it on unemployment and low-wage, low-skill jobs. I think that's narrowing the field in the right direction, but it isn't quite right; I know many very happy people who just make ends meet. There's something more that no one has been able to pinpoint quite yet.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_prevalenc...

[ThrustVectoring]

I think part of it is how the social safety net is done in the US. Americans have to "deserve" help, so when the lumber mill closes down for good, the 50 year old manual laborer has to become "disabled" due to his back pain in order to access the money he needs to survive. I've heard anecdotes of doctors asking whether patients have college degrees when they come in complaining of back pain. And the ranks of the disabled have swelled tremendously in recent years.

[stordoff]

Those data for opiate use, not abuse. I suspect the percentage of the population who have used any opiates at least once in the past year tells you very little about about opiate-related problems - using cocodamol once a year is obviously very different to the habitual use of oxycodone.

I further suspect that the availability of opiate-containing drugs over the counter in some countries accounts for some of the differences in those statistics (e.g. cocodamol in the UK).

[DanBC]

Your source lists opiates - products of opium poppy - not opioids (the superset that includes poppy products and synthetic product).

Since this discussion is about synthetic opioids it's not a useful source.

Have a look here. The US has considerably higher use than each of the countries you list when we talk about prescription meds.

http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/WDR2011/Sta...

[pfortuny]

That table is for opiate use, which needs not be (at all) ab-use. Your argument does not stand on that data.