[HN Gopher] Prices and Policies in Opioid Markets [pdf]
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       Prices and Policies in Opioid Markets [pdf]
        
       Author : Bostonian
       Score  : 36 points
       Date   : 2023-02-25 14:35 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.hoover.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.hoover.org)
        
       | Bostonian wrote:
       | Slides and video of presentation are at
       | https://www.hoover.org/events/policy-seminar-casey-mulligan-... ,
       | and discussed by John Cochrane at
       | https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2023/02/mulligan-and-dema....
        
         | photochemsyn wrote:
         | > "Once prescription opioids became an evident crisis, the
         | government took steps to restrict the supply, raising the
         | price. Yet opioid consumption and overdoses went up. Explain
         | that Mr. Chicago economist!"
         | 
         | First, comparing whites and blacks is misleading, you'd want to
         | compare wealthy vs. poor consumers of the drug. Second, lumping
         | 'opiods' together makes little sense when fentanyl is so
         | different in activity-per-gram, and cost-of-production relative
         | to oxy, heroin, and morphine. Third, overdoses are often
         | related to opiate addicts using drugs of varying purity, which
         | is what is found on illegal markets (plus other confounders
         | like suicide attempts, recovering addicts who've lost tolerance
         | falling off the wagon, etc.).
         | 
         | Just more evidence that Chicago School Economics is just artful
         | propaganda financed by oligarchs to promote further
         | accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few.
        
           | htag wrote:
           | The pdf described why consumption and overdoses went up after
           | 2011 when the government took steps to restrict the supply of
           | prescription opioids.
           | 
           | The price of illicit opioids was decreasing at the same time
           | the cost of prescription opioids was increasing. Illicit
           | opioids are a substitution product for prescription opioids
           | for many consumers, so they adjusted their consumption to a
           | more dangerous but cheaper product to fit budgetary
           | constraints.
        
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       (page generated 2023-02-25 23:01 UTC)