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Comment by monocasa | Hacker News Reader

I've seen probably a dozen people in my high school class die from their narcotic pain meds originally prescribed to them. I only took a quarter of what was prescribed after surgery from shattering my leg, and yet weening off was worse than the pain from the injury.

I don't blame him for the choices he made, having been there.

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Unless your local pharmacist is a serial killer, this stretches credulity.

How?

A dozen deaths in one HS graduating class? Really? That would raise suspicions on 'Dexter.'

You're referencing media I don't know, I don't understand why you don't think the scope of the opioid crisis that has claimed thousands could involve the deaths of 12 people with 1 thing in common. Pill mill pharmacies are a thing, and some of those pharmacists have been charged with crimes.

He means a year in HS, not a single classroom. That's a few hundred people.

And the way pharmacies were handing out opioids it's quite possible. Wasn't called a crisis for nothing.

Yeah, ~1200 person class.

So your class had a 1% death rate due to prescription opioids. Why do you suppose it was so far out of proportion to the general population? drugabuse.gov says prescription opioids accounted for around 15,000 deaths in 2017 [1], so 12 in a single high school graduating class is either a massive unexplained spike in the data, or something you made up.

1: https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/trends-statistics/over...

I'm not who you're replying to, but don't you think that given we know pill mills exist, it's likely the data is actually highly location specific? I.E., a city with one is more likely to have lots of ODs compared to the national average? Have you taken a statistic course? At this point I'm not sure what you're objecting to anymore.

A 1% death rate due to prescription opioids in a high-school age population sounds utterly unprecedented.

If true, it's interesting, and genuinely disturbing. I'd like to learn more about how something like that can happen at that scale.

If not true, it belongs on some other site where people don't care about what's true and not true.

Depends on what "die from their narcotic pain meds" means, and how big the high school class is, how long they've been out of school, and where their school is located.

Oxycotin pill mills.

I mean, I'd argue they're serial killers, but what they're doing is legal.

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