I very much doubt that the percentage of the population addicted to opiates is constant across every county in the country, but even if that were true, it's impossible to prove (or disprove) without metrics.

In the real world where there's limited funding, it's just not possible to replace every Starbucks with a treatment center, so communities need to find ways to make those limited resources as effective as possible, and what's more effective than using data about where more opioids are being used?

Phrase this as a positive rather than pejorative statement, and it seems far less compelling.

"Offering treatment on demand everywhere is massively cheaper than trying to find out who is addicted to opiates."

1. Why can't you do both?

2. Treatment on demand can be marketed and tailored based on information about users.

3. I'm not sure it's a safe bet that opiate addiction is in every community. Seems like a false assumption. To my knowledge there are geographic differences, economic differences, and medical access differences between cohorts that use and those that don't.

The danger of disparaging an idea before it reaches maturity is that criticism may actually be incorrect, and discourage/dissuade positive developments. You can get the same criticism across without being counterproductive.

>3. I'm not sure it's a safe bet that opiate addiction is in every community. Seems like a false assumption. To my knowledge there are geographic differences, economic differences, and medical access differences between cohorts that use and those that don't.

The data is pretty staggering. 1 in 3 Americans have an opiate prescription each year, 1 in 20 had misused or obtained opiates, and 1 in 100 self-reported as an addict:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-than-one-third-americans-p...

> Nearly 92 million U.S. adults, or about 38 percent of the population, took a legitimately prescribed opioid like OxyContin or Percocet in 2015, according to results from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

That is mind boggling! I had no idea that opioid prescriptions were that common.

So is this a Baby Boomer effect?

More than 1 in 6 Americans live in NY or CA. That doesn't mean CA and NY residents are in every community.

Disparaging the idea makes sense, as detecting drug use in an area served by a particular sewer is answering a question that nobody has asked.

If we care so much about sewers, perhaps we should take the money squandered on this and hire laborers to maintain or replace aging sewer infrastructure.

This has potential to not just answer the question "who's using?" but "does x affect usage?" which is potentially much more useful, because it not only localizes treatment but also informs it.

It really isn’t. Perhaps it’s similar across large areas, but how do you know without measuring? Surely areas with a larger problem should attract more funding than those with less of a problem? That’s how other diseases are treated so why not this?