In an interview with Harold Pollack, Keith Humphreys explains why drug overdoses don’t get enough attention as a public health crisis, despite being the leading cause of accidental death in the US:
HP: Why do you think it’s hard to get people galvanized around overdose?
KH: AIDS inspired incredible activism in part because it was localized in particular communities that already had a shared identity. That probably helped groups like Gay Men’s Health Crisis organize politically. People knew each other. They loved the people who were dying. There isn’t a comparable pre-existing community of people affected by overdose. It’s spread all over. The people who are dying and their loved ones don’t necessarily know each other. Also, there are also many people — as was true of AIDS — who feel that overdose is just punishment for immoral behavior and therefore isn’t a problem at all.
Sally Satel notes that, according “to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Abuse and Health, four out of five new heroin users had previously abused painkillers.” Humphreys sees those prescription medicines as a bigger problem than heroin:
Deaths from legal prescription opioids exceed those from heroin by a factor of five. If we want a lower prevalence of heroin addiction five years from now, we should be looking upstream at policies that will combat the mis-marketing, mis-prescribing, diversion and abuse of prescription opioids.
The Dish 