40% drop on one hand and 40% rise on the other... ah reckon thar maht be a connection!
Are their pill mills out there? Yes, and the DEA should shut them down.
But should we be undertreating real pain in order to “do something” about opioid deaths? He’ll no.
"A study of young, urban injection drug users interviewed in 2008 and 2009 found that 86 percent had used opioid pain relievers nonmedically prior to using heroin, and their initiation into nonmedical use was characterized by three main sources of opioids: family, friends, or personal prescriptions (Lankenau et al., 2012). This rate represents a shift from historical trends. Of people entering treatment for heroin addiction who began abusing opioids in the 1960s, more than 80 percent started with heroin. Of those who began abusing opioids in the 2000s, 75 percent reported that their first opioid was a prescription drug (Cicero et al., 2014)."
https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/rela...
That doesn’t mean you should be denying pain medication to people who need it.
What about causality? Confounding? Multivariate analysis? Nah?
You'll just assume they're causally related?
By the way, I rounded off the second of those numbers from 37% to 40%. Does that change the conclusion you reached using your statistical system? If not, what would be the threshold percentage at which you would determine there to be no direct inverse relationship between the two, after all?
Not sure, but if you're suggesting these are from legal prescription pain pills, please read the article and look at CDC data. You'll note that most opiate deaths aren't from pills, but from illegal heroin, fentanyl, and carfentanyl. Pain pill prescriptions are down 40% the past 5 years, even as opiate deaths are up 40%.