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Originally Posted by
agamemnus
I didn't make inferences or conclusions from pieces of text from the article I posted that you all did, taking it out of context. The article was posted in full so I wouldn't be accused of abridging. I considered the prescription stuff article fluff because it does not link or attempt to link one thing with another.
The entire article was about what you call the "fluff." The only mention of cannabis anywhere in it was about four words, in a list with other substance-abuse materials which are all commonly used by people who end up doing heroin.
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I don't think I took anything out of context from the link you posted.... it seems quite clear about what the mentioned study shows, which is that decreasing the prescription of opiods to deal with pain doesn't correlate with an increase in heroin use!
Yeah, you did. You even refused to consider the second part of that sentence.
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The claim that an increase in marijuana supply decreases the price of heroin isn't fanatical. The data supports a decrease in the price of heroin over the past 35 years, as marijuana supply increased.
Correlation is not causation and you've only got the loosest of correlations in the first place.
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I'll quote this again:
I fully recognize that the linked study also shows that heroin users are more likely to also be prescribed opiod abusers, however that is completely separate from any contention that a decrease in prescriptions per user leads to more heroin use and also separate from any contention that a path from prescribed drugs to heroin is the only reason that heroin deaths quadrupled from 2002 to 2013.
It does nothing of the sort. We know heroin use and prescription drug abuse are closely correlated, as shown by both the second part of the sentence which you have completely ignored time and time again but by all the other cited data, including your original article. For whatever reason (and I already suggested one mechanic which you acknowledged you could not dispute) this one single facet, which isn't even tracking USE, is not following the pattern all the other data shows. Yet. And you use that to completely ignore everything else and once against assert your claim of causation, which isn't backed up by so much as a single line written by anyone but you.
That tells us heroin use has gone up. So has supply. Which could itself be a function of demand. Which can be a function of changing conditions in Mexico and points further South. Which could be a result of almost anything at all, most of which track much more closely as correlates than your cannabis (and I'll note, you haven't provided one BIT of data on cannabis supply either, just an insistence that it must logically have changed massively as a result of legalization. When you've also just said in the post above you're trying to talk about the last thirty-five years and not just the last decade as had previously been under discussion.
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So here are the facts, not contentions or suppositions:
1) Heroin use and deaths went up.
2) Heroin prices went down and supply went up, along with marijuana prices going down and supply going up.
You know what has skyrocketed in very close combination with the heroin use and death rates, much more closely correlated than your uncited claims about marijuana prices and supply. Prescription opiate abuse. Maybe, just maybe, that's the driving factor. You know, as alleged by every single citation in this thread, including yours!
