For fun, let's compare them to guns and drunk drivers.
In 2013, there were 33,636 deaths "related to firearms" in the U.S.
-21,175 of them were suicides. (Meaning these don't count. It's just as easy to take pills, jump off a building, cut your wrists, etc.)
-505 were accidental shootings.
-281 were undetermined.
-11,208 were apparently homicides.
-You've got to love Wikipedia, and how those numbers don't add up. Also, cops shooting people must be under homicides. I remember breaking down these numbers previously, and removing the number of people killed by police drops the number of gun related homicides under 10,000. To be fair, we'll say 10,000.
Drunk drivers kill 10,265 people in the U.S. annually.
Every day in the U.S. 91 people die due to opioid use, which comes out to 33,215 annually.
10,000 by guns and we want them all banned.
10,000 by drunks and we don't want that substance banned, but driving under the influence is already illegal. Weird how people keep doing it...
33,000 by opioid use and I don't see the same outrage as I do over guns.
Why?
Is it because people don't want to give up their pain pills, ala alcohol? Or is it because opioids aren't easy to visualize and "villainize" like guns? Or are the conspiracy theorists right and the efforts to take our guns our a political long game?
