What in the world would that accomplish? Does this framing help us reduce these “suicides” ? Or is your proposal a way of helping us think there’s nothing we can do and ignoring it?
On the contrary it seems to me like an extremely unhelpful way of framing the problem.
Treating opiate addiction as someone on the path to suicide would be very different than framing them as a criminal or hopelessly diseased (the “progressive” model of addiction that took over the criminal model). But clearly there’s a lot of opposition to that idea, even here.
Some people hide their addiction well. Some don’t and are surrounded by friends and family who are aware of their struggle but don’t know how to help. It’s in many cases less surprising than people want to think.
There's life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but what if there's no happiness to go after? There're no jobs to be had, the Earth is dying, Wall Street is taking all the money. Doing heroin is way easier than fixing capitalism.
Anyway, yes absolutely don't be a doomer. I'm not, despite how I presented above. Life's not even worth living with that attitude. But if you're unable to even sympathize with someone else's plight, what are you even doing? How can you help them out of their pit if you can't see it?
Wasn't it a big thing to get people to stop fat shaming?
Yes, there are accidental overdoses where someone takes too much of a prescribed drug without realizing it or accidentally combines it with someone that amplifies the effect and results in death. That’s a different matter.
Many opiate addicts who die of overdose are essentially (oftentimes even openly) accepting they’ll die due to the drug someday. We treat PTSD-affected soldiers as humans who need assistance in pulling through their difficulties before making an irreversible mistake. But we treat drug addiction as a problem regarding the addiction itself, and not that people with troubled circumstances fall into drug addiction out of despair or other difficulties in life.
But I think attitudes regarding this won’t change because the US will instantly shoot ahead of the world in suicide death statistics—in a shame-based society that’s all about saving face like the US, that’s simply not going to happen.