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by doctorpangloss 2436 days ago
Or addicts die before they’re 70+ years old.
1 comments

But that's not what the graphs show. There is a diagonal that clearly tracks a birth year cohort, not an age.
True, but the graph show lots of people dying in their 20s and 30s. So if I was born in 1940s and became a heroin addict there's a good chance I die before 1979. So those born before 1950's are unlikely to die of a drug overdose between 1979-2016 because to do so they would have needed to become in contact with heroin for the first time well into their 30s instead of their teens and 20s.