“Are there an extreme number of people in Ohio without self-control or something?”
Well, we do know that humans in Ohio do not feel pain worse the humans in Texas.
Ohio has a far higher use of opioids than Texas and I’m guessing back pain in Ohio is just as bad as it is in Texas.
However, I have never heard a doctor give their patient that diagnosis of “Small Town Ohio Back Pain.”
Therefore, it is something about the cultures of Ohio, West Virginia, North Dakota, and Massachusetts that make pain more significant than the back pain in Wisconsin, California and Colorado.
You got in Texas. It is just better concealed, and maybe you are not quite so far down the road.
With every phenomenon, there is a distribution. Some areas will be more effected early than others. Just their bad luck. But it all evens out, over time.
To a certain extent, economic despair opens the door. Idle hands are the Devil’s playthings, as they used to say. But this door will get opened everywhere, eventually.
How do you propose we modify the culture of Appalachia in order to bring opioid deaths under control, and who will be in charge of modifying it?
Yes it is a gateway drug. A gateway to escaping opioid addiction.
We have a meth problem in Texas. Seems like doctors in Texas aren’t as generously giving out opioid scripts here as in other places, but it’s available on the streets.