"Deaths of Despair" Increase Rapidly in America

 We aren't sure we agree with this article's premise.  They talk about suicides and drug overdoses and how someone with a college degree seems much less likely to die of these causes.  So they falsely conclude that it's a college education that seems to be the "talisman" against death from despair.

In the U.S., a four-year degree is increasingly a “talisman” against deaths related to suicide and economic hardship, according to a new research paper that offers a stark verdict on the current economy.

While the suicide rate almost doubled among White non-Hispanics without a bachelor’s degree in the 1992-2019 period to about 31 per 100,000 people, there was almost no increase among those with a degree, economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton wrote in their September paper. Covid-19 likely exacerbated deaths of despair from opioid overdoses -- already increasing pre-pandemic -- as people grew more isolated and more fentanyl showed up in other drugs.

The broader issue, though, is that the U.S. economy and society “are no longer providing the basis for a good life” for the less-educated.

“Even if the opioid epidemic is brought under control,” the researchers wrote, “the underlying despair is likely to remain. The prospects for less-educated Americans remain bleak unless there are fundamental changes in the way that the American economy operates.” The two economic scholars -- a married couple -- last year had a New York Times bestseller in their book entitled “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism.”

Case coined the term “deaths of despair” in 2015, when she studied the rise of suicides and drug and alcohol-fueled deaths among working class Whites in the U.S., following the decline of the manufacturing sector. Since then, Black and Hispanic deaths have also skyrocketed.

Here;  ‘Deaths of Despair’ Worsen Among Americans Lacking College Degrees - Articles - Advisor Perspectives

How sad that deaths of despair are increasing in the most wealthy nation in the world?  Maybe it's because wealth has nothing to do with making you happy or content?  Maybe it's because Mammon is a false, demon-god that entices people but in the end leads to death?

Here's an idea that the article doesn't mention.  The drug epidemic that is ruining our nation.  Here's how it works...kids start using drugs in Junior High at around the age of 12.  They start with a little weed or THC in a vape or dab pen.  Once they start getting stoned they think it's a ton of fun.  They now have something cool to do with their friends.  It doesn't end there.  Once they start doing 'a little weed" then someone introduces them to mushrooms, LSD, pills, cocaine or meth.  Then their school starts to suffer because their brains aren't functioning.  They get farther and farther behind until they realize they are 19 and are reading, writing and thinking like 12 year old kids.  They are drug addicted.  They can't get into college because they can't spell the word "essay" and they certainly can't write one.  They fail even the most basic of math tests.  And even though the nation needs 80,000 truck drivers these same folks can't pass a drug test or can't read well enough to pass the license test.

So is it the lack of college degree that makes them miserable?  Or is it the drugs that have possessed their lives and made them incapable of holding any job that leads them to despair and death?

After working with drug addicted boys for the past 5 years we believe it is the drugs that came first that are leading them to despair and death.

"Your enemy, Satan, prowls around like a hungry lion looking for WHOM he may devour."

Just watch what happens to "Deaths of despair" once more and more states legalize marijuana for recreational use.  As a country, we won't have enough beds in treatment facilities to house the drug addicts that are coming.

Some translations say that "magic arts" will be prevalent in the Last Days.  That word is translated from the Greek word PHARMAKIA in which we get our word PHARMACY.  Drugs.