[bdauvergne]

Maybe they completely reversed the causality, it's a demand shock not a supply shock. There are less users because they died, and they died pretty fast compared to previous opioid users. As demand diminished there was over supply and to maintain their margins provider had to lower the supply. QED.

As it's a pretty simple hypothesis to test and that it was not maybe imply that the conclusion is politically motivated. Supply-shock imply that something was done and it worked, but that the problem solved itself is not as palatable for someone politically motivated like an administration.

[lelanthran]

> Supply-shock imply that something was done and it worked, but that the problem solved itself is not as palatable for someone politically motivated like an administration.

Problem solving itself by killing the users is also not palatable because the conclusion is that the users are expendable in pursuit of solving the problem.

Since neither conclusion is going to be politically acceptable, why is your default hypothesis that the paper must be wrong because your political conclusion is better than the paper's political conclusion?

[cryptonector]

> As it's a pretty simple hypothesis to test

How would one test it?

[bdauvergne]

How do they know the number of opioid users currently ? Do the same.