
Opioid epidemic costs West Virginia $8.8B annually, study says - SQL2219
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/health/opioid-epidemic-costs-wv-billion-annually-study-says/article_1cd8aaa5-78eb-5fd5-8619-3a0a1c086e66.html
======
Maarten88
I was in the US recently and watched some TV in my hotel room. I noticed that
half the commercials seem to be for prescription drugs, trying to convince
people to "talk to their doctor" about using some drug to fix some vague
inconvenience.

I am happy it is illegal to advertise prescription drugs to the general public
in the EU, it seems pretty clear this does not lead to good things.

~~~
refurb
Why don't you look and see what the FDA says about it? I'll let you Google the
study from the early 2000's.

Most people who ask their doctor about a drug they saw on TV have the disease.
Of those, a small percentage were undiagnosed, thus _the TV commercial helped
them with self-diagnosis_.

I'd say that's a good thing, no?

Plus, opioids have never been advertised on TV, so you point isn't relevant.

~~~
Jedd
> I'd say that's a good thing, no?

No.

The underlying issue you've described there would be better treated by
educating people to talk to their doctors about their _actual problems_ , not
around marketed solutions <sic> to perceived symptoms.

Which is what happens in most other western societies (UK, EU, AU, NZ, etc).

The fact that absent that kind of direct marketing, there isn't the same kind
of opioid crisis may be merely correlative ... but I'll let you google around
for studies that indicate causative effects in play there.

~~~
refurb
Two points:

Look at my other post. I'm sourcing actual data that shows benefits and
drawbacks. Care to source something to back up your claims?

You realize that a decent amount of DTC in the US is around disease awareness
and not a specific product, right? It's those commercials that say "Disease X
has new treatments that can help you, ask your doctor." Products are not
mentioned.

BTW - NZ allows for DTC the last I heard.

~~~
Jedd
> Look at my other post. I'm sourcing actual data that shows benefits and
> drawbacks. Care to source something to back up your claims?

My reply to your comment came before your 'other posts' .. consequently they
were not taken into account during my reply. I note that your 'other post'
points to a link at the US FDA that includes this caveat:

"It has come to our attention that readers may be projecting these results
beyond the surveyed samples. We remind readers that this was designed to be an
exporatory look at this issue. We caution readers that these analyses were not
weighted back to the population."

> You realize that a decent amount of DTC in the US is around disease
> awareness and not a specific product, right?

I am not, and I would welcome a breakdown of the ratio of public-service non-
sponsored content vs 'specific product' advertisement ... if indeed such a
separation could be determined.

This is of course allowing for a large leeway of 'disease awareness' versus
'drug marketing' differentiation.

> BTW - NZ allows for DTC the last I heard.

"Such industry funded ‘health information’ campaigns have been banned in
almost all industrialised countries since the 1940s. New Zealand and the
United States are lonely exceptions.

"To what does New Zealand owe this dubious honour? While most other developed
countries enacted legislation prohibiting this practice approximately three
quarters of a century ago, the New Zaland Medicines Act 1981 failed to address
DTCA, seemingly more by accident than design."

(from [https://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/read-the-journal/all-
issues/...](https://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/read-the-journal/all-
issues/2010-2019/2014/vol-127-no-1401/6278) )

So that's an accidental 2m pro-people for your argument.

------
paulsutter
West Virginia voted 70% for Trump in the election (and 70% for Bernie in the
primary). Just in case anyone still thinks Trump was elected based on racism,
or Russia, or whatever the media obsession this week, the truth is that life
is a damn mess for a large part of the country that's been forgotten by the
coastal elitists

~~~
FreakyT
And such a result it just goes to show how brainwashed they are. Nothing's
more appealing than a scapegoat (liberals, "coastal elites", the EPA,
Mexicans), when the biggest problem is yourself.

~~~
paulsutter
> Nothing's more appealing than a scapegoat (liberals, "coastal elites", the
> EPA, Mexicans)

Did you catch that they voted 70% for Bernie?

~~~
Buldak
Where does this 70% figure come from? A cursory search I just did turns up 51%
for Bernie [1]. At any rate, it's unclear to me what you take this to show.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_Democratic_prima...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_Democratic_primary,_2016)

~~~
paulsutter
I thought it was by 70% by delegate count, but yes it looks like 62%

------
at-fates-hands
Thing that saddens me is this article goes to great lengths to talk about the
economic impact on the state, without so much as try and pinpoint the REASON
they have such a huge problem with opioids.

This is the only paragraph on one of the probable causes:

 _In 2012, then-state Attorney General Darrell McGraw filed lawsuits against
more than a dozen drug wholesalers, accusing the companies of fueling West
Virginia’s drug problem by shipping an excessive number of pain pills to the
state. The lawsuit alleged that the drug problem cost the state $430 million a
year, and projected that those costs would rise to $695 million by 2017._

So they're suing drug companies not because an excessive amount of people are
dying, it's because it's costing the state $600+ million?

\- How about pumping a few billion into treatment centers so people have a way
out instead of jumping from pain pills to heroin to fentanyl and then ODing on
fentanyl?

\- How about pumping a few billion dollars into finding and developing new
methods to combat chronic pain? This would include alternative methods and
such things like CBD oils or making medicinal marijuana legal in all 50
states?

\- How about imposing stricter limits on what doctors can prescribe or just
banning the drugs all together?

\- How about making billions of federal money available to states to try give
them additional resources to combat the root problem instead of just adding
more police officers to put non-violent addicts in jail?

There's so many things we _could_ be doing and yet, nobody is really doing
_anything_ about it. As soon as you start talking about this as an _economic_
issue, you totally lose me. This is about real people and you shouldn't be
concerned about the economic impact to your state, since that's not the root
of the cause. Fix the root causes (there are many) and those economic issues
will fix themselves.

------
UncleEntity
881 deaths == $331 million in lost productivity due to overdose deaths?

That's like $375k per person or something.

~~~
username8884547
someone has to raise their kids, support their families? Also there's a loss
on taxes. BUT, on the "positive" side, they die early, no SS or medical
expenses. An overdose and all is settled.

~~~
hinkley
Your widow/er can still collect.

~~~
ridgeguy
As can your children under some circumstances.

------
jwatte
Privatize profits, socialize costs. Works as intended!

~~~
dang
Could you please not post ideological boilerplate to HN? It leads to flamewars
and lowers the quality level below what we're hoping for here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

