Number One Cause Of Death US 18 to 49

[Bryce]

While statistics and charts have been thrown around in various threads, here is a statistic that I found during my daily reading journey that really surprised me and hasn't gotten much media attention.

According to Statista(1), between the beginning of January 2020 and December 15, 2021, 53,158 Americans between the ages of 18 and 49 have died from the Coronavirus. That's about the seating capacity of the old Tigers Stadium at Michigan and Trumble. What was surprising, is that wasn't the leading cause of death for that age group. Cancer? Auto accidents? Gun violence? Nope, the leading cause of death in the 18 to 49 age group was fentanyl overdoses. The analysis from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) shows that nearly 79,000 Americans died from the drug between 2020 and 2021.(2)

Coronavirus and methods to stop it, steps to take and what's to blame, dominates much of the news cycle. Thread upon thread has been created and heatedly discussed on this very board, but the leading cause of death for a wide swath of the population gets little or no mention here or in the MSM. I suspect that the reason this isn't garnering newspaper headlines or massive coverage on most of the cable and broadcast outlets is because of where all this fentanyl is coming from. Amazon isn't delivering it. Helicopters aren't dropping it into neighborhoods, it's coming across our open Southern border by the Mexican Crime Cartels.

While the Administration and TV talking heads go into Histrionics over Covid, with mixed results, simply closing the Southern border and reinstating Trump policy would save more lives. Pretty tough for the Biden cheerleaders to cover this when in fact most of these 79,000 deaths fall squarely on Democrat Party and Biden Administration open border policy.




1 https://www.statista.com/statistics/119 ... by-age-us/
2 https://arizonasuntimes.com/2021/12/18/ ... a-in-2020/

[bmw]

I'm not sure the solution is simple as closing the border (even though I support doing that for a host of other reasons). The problem is that drugs wouldn't be coming across the border if there wasn't demand for them here. As long as Americans want the drugs, they will find a way to get them. In my view, it is the significant (hopefully temporary) deterioration in the quality of life since Covid that is largely to blame.

[Bryce]

I'm not sure the solution is simple as closing the border (even though I support doing that for a host of other reasons). The problem is that drugs wouldn't be coming across the border if there wasn't demand for them here. As long as Americans want the drugs, they will find a way to get them. In my view, it is the significant (hopefully temporary) deterioration in the quality of life since Covid that is largely to blame.

Although drugs in general are a problem, this fentanyl that is being brought in by the Mexican Crime Cartels is deadly. More so than any other drug and it's flowing across the border in record amounts. Some section of the populace want their drugs, but I doubt very many of them want a drug that has a high chance of killing them.

I guess if I looked at things like some folks that live up north, I wouldn't be bothered by it. I'm pretty certain it's killing more Democrat voters than Republican's, but I view the lives of all Americans as sacred.

[Rate This]

I'm not sure the solution is simple as closing the border (even though I support doing that for a host of other reasons). The problem is that drugs wouldn't be coming across the border if there wasn't demand for them here. As long as Americans want the drugs, they will find a way to get them. In my view, it is the significant (hopefully temporary) deterioration in the quality of life since Covid that is largely to blame.

Although drugs in general are a problem, this fentanyl that is being brought in by the Mexican Crime Cartels is deadly. More so than any other drug and it's flowing across the border in record amounts. Some section of the populace want their drugs, but I doubt very many of them want a drug that has a high chance of killing them.

I guess if I looked at things like some folks that live up north, I wouldn't be bothered by it. I'm pretty certain it's killing more Democrat voters than Republican's, but I view the lives of all Americans as sacred.

And as long as you keep the stuff illegal, don’t regulate it and let the cartels (which are really giant shady illegal corporations on the scale of billions of dollars annually) bootleg the stuff with no idea what’s being put in it this will continue. The war on drugs is the problem. It has created a permanent class of addicts and poor people, placed an unnecessary burden on our prison system with otherwise non-violent people and caused lots of crime as people fight over the stuff on the street. Among many mistakes that allowed the country to deteriorate since 1970 this is probably top of the list. Had prohibition kept going instead of being repealed we would have been here a long time ago. They were smart enough to shift approaches. We have some illusion that you’re gonna stop people from using drugs or something. Substance abuse is everywhere, that’s just a fact.

One subject where I’m an absolute libertarian on.

[bmw]

I don't think the war on drugs -is- the problem; though I don't think it is helping the problem.

The problem is, why do so many Americans feel the need to take drugs in the first place? I get Bryce's point about fentanyl specifically being a particularly nasty drug, but I'm just asking this question in general. An overall happy, thriving society should not have such a high percentage of its population feel the need to seek drugs.

[Rate This]

I don't think the war on drugs -is- the problem; though I don't think it is helping the problem.

The problem is, why do so many Americans feel the need to take drugs in the first place? I get Bryce's point about fentanyl specifically being a particularly nasty drug, but I'm just asking this question in general. An overall happy, thriving society should not have such a high percentage of its population feel the need to seek drugs.

Pressure to perform, depression, peer pressure, needing an escape from the problems in their lives. Perhaps because they like the feeling. Why do people “need a drink”? It’s the same thing. Alcohol is a drug too.

Drug use has been going on for millennia… thinking we are going to stop it at all costs and jailing people instead of figuring out how to work with it is kind of naive…

Legalizing it would also stop the street deals and cause the cartels to change what they are doing. But it has to be full legalization and not some half assed thing that makes the black market lucrative still.

[Bryce]

I don't think the war on drugs -is- the problem; though I don't think it is helping the problem.

The problem is, why do so many Americans feel the need to take drugs in the first place? I get Bryce's point about fentanyl specifically being a particularly nasty drug, but I'm just asking this question in general. An overall happy, thriving society should not have such a high percentage of its population feel the need to seek drugs.

Pressure to perform, depression, peer pressure, needing an escape from the problems in their lives. Perhaps because they like the feeling. Why do people “need a drink”? It’s the same thing. Alcohol is a drug too.

Drug use has been going on for millennia… thinking we are going to stop it at all costs and jailing people instead of figuring out how to work with it is kind of naive…

Legalizing it would also stop the street deals and cause the cartels to change what they are doing. But it has to be full legalization and not some half assed thing that makes the black market lucrative still.

The legalization of Marijuana hasn't put the black market out of business. What makes you think that it would work on other substances?

Overwhelmed by illegal cannabis, Oregon county declares emergency

https://www.opb.org/article/2021/10/13/ ... arijunana/

[Bryce]

Some other facts I've found...
Via ABC news:

The portrait of the opioid epidemic has long been painted as a rural white affliction, but the demographics have been shifting for years as deaths surged among Black Americans.

In the city of St. Louis, deaths among Black people increased last year at three times the rate of white people, skyrocketing more than 33%. Black men in Missouri are now four times more likely than a white person to die of an overdose.

Where are the demands from all the groups that say they care about "Black Lives" to do something about this? The opioid epidemic, fentanyl in particular, is causing a bigger problem in the Black community than Police officers and Covid, yet not a peep. If people marched in the streets of St. Louis because of the death of one Black Man, why is no one marching because of the deaths of hundreds or thousands? Deaths that could be stopped in the Biden Administration did something.

For those of you not familiar with Fentanyl, it's a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. It is the major contributor to fatal and nonfatal overdoses in the U.S.

[Rate This]

I don't think the war on drugs -is- the problem; though I don't think it is helping the problem.

The problem is, why do so many Americans feel the need to take drugs in the first place? I get Bryce's point about fentanyl specifically being a particularly nasty drug, but I'm just asking this question in general. An overall happy, thriving society should not have such a high percentage of its population feel the need to seek drugs.

Pressure to perform, depression, peer pressure, needing an escape from the problems in their lives. Perhaps because they like the feeling. Why do people “need a drink”? It’s the same thing. Alcohol is a drug too.

Drug use has been going on for millennia… thinking we are going to stop it at all costs and jailing people instead of figuring out how to work with it is kind of naive…

Legalizing it would also stop the street deals and cause the cartels to change what they are doing. But it has to be full legalization and not some half assed thing that makes the black market lucrative still.

The legalization of Marijuana hasn't put the black market out of business. What makes you think that it would work on other substances?

Overwhelmed by illegal cannabis, Oregon county declares emergency

https://www.opb.org/article/2021/10/13/ ... arijunana/

It’s not legalized it’s decriminalized… there is a massive difference.

[Bryce]

It’s not legalized it’s decriminalized… there is a massive difference.

That statement is not true at all. Marijuana is LEGAL for both medicinal and recreational use in Oregon as well as 14 other states.

[km1125]

I don't think the war on drugs -is- the problem; though I don't think it is helping the problem.

The problem is, why do so many Americans feel the need to take drugs in the first place? I get Bryce's point about fentanyl specifically being a particularly nasty drug, but I'm just asking this question in general. An overall happy, thriving society should not have such a high percentage of its population feel the need to seek drugs.

I agree with a lot of this.

I think part of it is that kids are sheltered from the realities of life for too long. They get to the "experimenter" stage and everything is 'game'. Perhaps if more kids saw the destruction of lives due to drugs, they'd be less enticed to enter that world.

[Rate This]

It’s not legalized it’s decriminalized… there is a massive difference.

That statement is not true at all. Marijuana is LEGAL for both medicinal and recreational use in Oregon as well as 14 other states.

It’s not legal federally. What that means is that the cops don’t prosecute you for having amounts below a certain threshold. That does not mean it’s legal in those states. They didn’t opt out of federal law. They chose not to enforce it and codify upper limits as far as amounts go before it does become illegal.

[kager]

It’s not legalized it’s decriminalized… there is a massive difference.

Huh?

Oregon voters made producing, processing, selling and using recreational marijuana legal in a ballot measure in 2014.

Talk of legalizing dangerous drugs like fentanyl (why not include heroin?) is beyond obtuse.

[Rate This]

It’s not legalized it’s decriminalized… there is a massive difference.

Huh?

Oregon voters made producing, processing, selling and using recreational marijuana legal in a ballot measure in 2014.

Talk of legalizing dangerous drugs like fentanyl (why not include heroin?) is beyond obtuse.

So they have legalized it under state law… effectively they are a marijuana sanctuary state… federal law still is supposed to trump state law.


So what do we do? Simply let this go on into oblivion? You aren’t going to stop it. You are going to ruin a lot of otherwise harmless peoples lives because they possess it. It will continue to cause deaths because of impurities in the drug and no regulation of how much you can get.

There are always going to be deaths from this just like alcohol or tobacco no matter what but government policies meant to look tough for the voters shouldn’t be a major contributor to the reason.

[quote="Rate This" post_id=687558 time=<a href="tel:1640191544">1640191544</a> user_id=15214]
[quote=bmw post_id=687557 time=<a href="tel:1640191408">1640191408</a> user_id=181]
I don't think the war on drugs -is- the problem; though I don't think it is helping the problem.

The problem is, why do so many Americans feel the need to take drugs in the first place? I get Bryce's point about fentanyl specifically being a particularly nasty drug, but I'm just asking this question in general. An overall happy, thriving society should not have such a high percentage of its population feel the need to seek drugs.

Pressure to perform, depression, peer pressure, needing an escape from the problems in their lives. Perhaps because they like the feeling. Why do people “need a drink”? It’s the same thing. Alcohol is a drug too.

Drug use has been going on for millennia… thinking we are going to stop it at all costs and jailing people instead of figuring out how to work with it is kind of naive…

Legalizing it would also stop the street deals and cause the cartels to change what they are doing. But it has to be full legalization and not some half assed thing that makes the black market lucrative still.

The legalization of Marijuana hasn't put the black market out of business. What makes you think that it would work on other substances?

Overwhelmed by illegal cannabis, Oregon county declares emergency

https://www.opb.org/article/2021/10/13/ ... arijunana/

They had an article the previous week on this too:

Authorities say it’s due to the demand for marijuana in parts of the U.S. where it remains illegal.

https://www.opb.org/article/2021/10/05/ ... utType=amp

The issue is water being siphoned off for these illegal farms which exist there because some guys figured out they can grow it where it’s legal and sell it to places where it isn’t. If it was federally legalized on a National basis this would go away. If you can suddenly grow it in Alabama or West Virginia yourself or get it from your neighbor why would you need some underground network anymore?

[Bryce]

[
It’s not legal federally. What that means is that the cops don’t prosecute you

Cops don't prosecute. They arrest. When was the last federal prosecution for marijuana possession in the state of Michigan? Answer, not one since legalization.