Addictive pain-killers killed 64,000 residents in the U.S.
in 2016, in part because physicians tended to rely on patients’ self-determined
ratings of pain on a scale of 1 to 10.[1]
Such subjective ratings were of course vulnerable to self-seeking motives
willfully negligent or even reckless in terms of health. A habit or marked
tendency in favor of choices at the expense of a person’s own long-term well-being stems, I submit,
from weak impulse-control. This, plus the related lack of consideration for
other people, either causes or is associated generally with poor people at
least in the United States.
Poverty, it has been said, is the cruelest form of war, for
such war can go on and on and wreck subtle though tremendous damage on the
afflicted. Yet the mentality that can get a person into such a war and
associated bad choices can be easily overlooked by elites that deign to study
the problem of poverty.
The full essay is at "An Addictive Habit."
[1]
Gregory Korte, “U.S. Waging Tech War against Opioid Epidemic,” USA Today, November 24-26, 2017.
