[pardoned_turkey]

In private life, we probably do more "dumb things" than we used to. The number of people dying in car accidents or due to drug overdoses is absolutely staggering and is a fairly recent phenomenon. The gains from banning lawn darts and no longer using fire grenades are inconsequential in comparison.

To be fair, workplace safety has improved quite a bit - some of it thanks to regulation, some due to economic shifts (less mining, more office work). This improved the life expectancy of lower-class men.

But that aside, a lot of the gains in life expectancy have to do with very basic things - like flush toilets, along with generally improved standards of living.

[a_gnostic]

Can't have workplace accidents, if your factory moved to China…

[lostlogin]

> The number of people dying in car accidents or due to drug overdoses is absolutely staggering and is a fairly recent phenomenon.

If you don’t call alcohol poisoning a drug overdose, the stats get skewed to make the past look better.

[Retric]

Alcohol poisoning was and is quite rare. Plenty of long term health issues from drinking and smoking, but we don’t consider diseases from shared needles as an overdose either.

~140,000 people die from excessive alcohol use in the U.S. each year, only ~2,000 of those are alcohol poisoning.

[Snow_Falls]

Always seemed strange to me how we've decided alcohol is different somehow.

[hilbert42]

Logically you're right alcohol ought to be treated the same but culturally it's very different in that it's been a part of partaking of food—eating and drinking since before the beginning of recorded time.

Alcohol is intrinsically ingrained in many if not most cultures.

[lettergram]

> In private life, we probably do more "dumb things" than we used to. The number of people dying in car accidents or due to drug overdoses is absolutely staggering and is a fairly recent phenomenon. The gains from banning lawn darts and no longer using fire grenades are inconsequential in comparison.

I would consider drug overdoses dramatically different than car accidents. To the point, "dumb things" where you put deadly chemical in jar (fire extinguisher) is not the same as purposely injecting yourself or accidentally losing control of your vehicle.

For what it's worth, while drug fatalities are increasing (arguably there was an intentional act to start drugs, granted addition is less so):

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

Vehicle fatalities are actually going down per year (and have been, on average, since the inception of the car)

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

> But that aside, a lot of the gains in life expectancy have to do with very basic things - like flush toilets, along with generally improved standards of living.

I agree with you there, lots of minor things like vitamins, clean water, improved environmental controls, etc add up dramatically

[pksebben]

So like, here's the thing with the overdose crisis - it is in fact just like the dangerous chemicals being put in a jar. It's actually specifically that.

The recent spike in drug overdoses has nearly nothing to do with people going out and making bad decisions (at least, not more than they've made over the last 50 years), but the fact that doctors and pharma companies, who ought to know better, keep putting fentanyl out into the world and making it as accessible as any other schedule 1 controlled substance. You know, like weed is a schedule 1 controlled substance (1).

According to NIDA (who are the don't-do-drugs-mmkay folks, responsible for gems like the egg ad and DARE), the lion's share of the spike in drug-related fatalities is due to instances where the drugs taken were "in combination with synthetic opioids other than methadone" (2). That's fentanyl, folks. As cheap and easy to get as it is lethal, and here we are putting it in hospitals because anesthesiologists think it's just the bee's knees.

So like, we're putting little microscopic landmines out there AND creating the circumstances for an unregulated black market that benefits from mixing said landmines into people's cocaine, which ostensibly they want because they have a really great business pitch they just gotta get out at 3am at the club (rather than a crippling addiction that's leading them to OD). IMHO, kinda similar to the fire grenades. No way bad shit ain't gonna happen and it's on us if we're surprised.

1 - https://www.dea.gov/drug-information/drug-scheduling

2 - https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd...

[code_duck]

Fentanyl is not a schedule I substance. That would mean it’s not available for medical purposes or any other purpose. It’s schedule II, like other prescription drugs with a high potential for abuse (as listed in the link you provided). Anyway, the fentanyl that has recently been killing people is not diverted from the medical industry - it’s synthesized by the criminals who traffick it. There’s nothing wrong with fentanyl use in hospitals. The thing that makes it particularly dangerous compared to other narcotic analgesics is its very high potency by weight, which is not a problem in a medical setting where dosages are carefully measured and stock is of known and reliable concentrations.

[wegfawefgawefg]

Thank you for the information, I appreciate it. But for me your vernacular is a bit offputting. I had to force myself to finish reading your comment. "So like," in a written context takes away from the information. Or I could be wrong and people with similar speech will synchronize with you. I'm not attacking you, so I hope you don't feel that way, but it is something to consider.

[pksebben]

I hear you, and I think it's a fair thing to establish for oneself what constitutes effective communication.

The question I would put to you though is this: what is the value of what was said, and following that, what effect is your linguistic filter having on your acquisition of quality, reliable information? (realizing, as another commenter pointed out, that I made an error and that fentanyl is actually schedule II, which is another bonkers discussion entirely).

Like you, I'm not on the defensive or trying to attack you in any way. I just think it's a valuable skill to be able to synthesize information from a variety of contexts; especially in a world like ours, where combining information from various sources (cultures, communities, etc) can add up to more than the sum of the individual datum.

As for my usage of the language (so you don't think I got GPT to write this for me), it's a nod to the American writers of the 1960s-70s, who had to deal quite a bit with the fiction of the self-destructive "druggie", created by a political regime that was pushing a drug war.

That said, it is something to consider that my point could have been lost. I appreciate the feedback.

[TeMPOraL]

Didn't this construct recently become, like, accepted English grammar or something? Or was it the "because <noun>" thing?

[wegfawefgawefg]

It wasnt any one colloquialism that made it annoying, but the whole phrasiology package combined with the moral high ground.

"so like, folks, you know like, heres the thing, here we are, puttin out there, the fact that we are actually,"

Its my bias of course, but I have never respected anyone who speaks that way, nor have I been given reasons to do so. If its not a critical context, its fine. But this was, so it came off very karen.

[bigbillheck]

> I have never respected anyone who speaks that way, nor have I been given reasons to do so.

Who are you that pksebben or anybody else should care?

[jayd16]

Drug use is a modern thing? Opium, tobacco and alcohol are quite old.

[ponector]

Drug use is not a modern thing. Drug overdose is. It is much harder to overdose while smoking opium than swallowing pills or receiving a fentanyl injection.

[lostlogin]

And drinking oneself to death has been a constant.

Edit: it isn’t constant, but has held surprisingly steady. https://ourworldindata.org/alcohol-consumption