A recent statistic about opioid use has been hitting the headlines. The propaganda being pushed into weak minded Americans is that Americans are more likely to die from an opioid overdose than a car accident. The fact that the number of opioid overdoses resulting in death has surpassed those from car accidents does not mean that any American is more likely to die from an overdose.
First of all the statistics being compared to one another is like comparing apples to oranges. One simple reason; Statistics of auto related deaths are based on the amount of licensed or registered drivers, most of which are American citizens. The statistics of overdoses doesn’t follow the same criteria for any practical baseline comparisons. I can agree that there were more deaths from opioid overdoses than car accidents, but that absolutely doesn’t mean that Americans are more likely to die. This is pure propaganda. There is a problem with rampant over use of opioids, but fear mongering is not the way to address the problem. In addition, it is a huge mistake for illegal use and legal use to be lumped together in the same category.
There are huge numbers of Americans that benefit greatly from small doses of narcotic medications, and can use them for decades responsibly with very few adverse medical complications from them. In fact, eastern cultures have been using unrefined narcotics to treat chronic pain for thousands of years, with patients commonly living into their eighties, even after many decades of use.
Overdose statistics are gathered from hospital and law enforcement statistics, which don’t specify whether the person that died was a citizen or not. Therefore to compare and accuse all Americans of being susceptible to meet that fate is extremely disingenuous. These statistics are not even gathered from a baseline of people that are prescribed opioids, or even estimated users of opioids, legal or illegal. The fact that the statistic is out there is alarming, but probably can me more accurately attributed to an increase in illegal contraband flowing across our southern border along with the massive increase in illegal immigrants that more likely responsible for the sudden rise in overdoses than anything else.