Dark web dealers voluntarily ban deadly fentanyl
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
- Fentanyl is only more dangerous than heroin because it is not properly prepared. This means the dilution is not homogeneous, and users unexpectedly come across a stronger dose or batch.
- If properly prepared, fentanyl is safer than heroin. Its therapeutic index is 400 vs 70 for heroin (this measures the ratio between active dose and toxic dose). Proper preparation means diluting it so that users can take a dose similar to heroin for the same effects. With correctly diluted fentanyl, users have a wider margin of error before an overdose. Dilution is never done as a last step by the user, it's done in labs that prepare large amounts of the drug.
- For addicts, the ritual is the same for both drugs. The feeling is mostly the same, but lasts a little shorter for fentanyl. The addiction potential being higher for one or the other is disputable.
- Once again, it having a lower active dose ("stronger") does not make it inherently more dangerous. It just makes dilution more technical, and this is where the problem comes from.
Edit: Of course, I am in no way defending recreational use of the drug. Like all opioids, it's very addictive and can easily lead to a self-destructive habit. And with recreational users, overdoses will probably happen even with a perfectly diluted batch.
I do agree that the potency makes preparation difficult. Few dealers have the equipment to either accurately weigh it out or dilute it such that the product is homogenous. When you move up to even more potent opioids like carfentanyl or sufentanyl, the risk is even higher. Who has the ability to accurately weigh out 0.030 mg?
That said, dying of a “hot dose” of heroin is not exactly uncommon either.
Interestingly, opioids are toxic at high doses as they depress the breathing response to blood CO2 levels. If someone overdosed and you breath for them (CPR or ventilator), you can just wait for the effects to wear off and they’ll be none the worse for wear. I’ve read case reports where a users friends maintain CPR for an hour plus until they started breathing on their own.
Were they doing CPR or Rescue Breathing or both?
I'm not a doctor but an hour of chest compressions to someone with a functioning heart seems bad.
It's the painkiller I was given in the recovery room after a shoulder surgery and let me tell you, I can see why folks would grow fond of that feeling. There followed possibly the best nap of my life.
At the time I wished for better painkillers, but maybe it's actually better that way...
A lot of the US problem is that those patients will then be given a big box of opioids to take home for the next week. They then have some opioids spare which they keep insecurely in a cupboard. A relative or neighbour gains access to these and starts their addiction.
Even the week isn't really a problem, in fact that's become one of the restrictions here in Ohio because the normal practice was to prescribe entire months at a time. People were ending up with 30-60+ day supplies of extended release medications like oxycontin for recovery from procedures that shouldn't have been all that painful for more than 10-12 days.
Now if a doctor wants to prescribe opiates for acute pain after a surgery or something, it can't be more than a 7 day supply, any longer and the pharmacist can't fill it. A completely new prescription is required for every additional 7 day supply.
In contrast to what was going on before, that means there are now on average 7-8 opportunities for a doctor to re-evaluate whether opiates are still appropriate over a 60 day period, rather than just 1 (the prescription for the 2nd 30 day supply).
But I recognize the attitude. I live in a Nordic country, and I think they're still pretty conservative with pain management on the public side especially. Although that used to be way worse. I don't think what you described could happen here normally. Availability of stronger opioids like oxycodone and fentanyl are more strictly controlled, and they try to keep them confined to hospital use and only for severe pain, cancer patients etc., at home. But stuff like codeine is prescribed much more and could be the stuff you get to take home after even a smaller surgery.
That said, even the simple analgesics (paracetamol, ibuprofen) have their dangers and we have maximum dosing that should not be exceeded. Paracetamol overdose causes horrible liver damage (up to and including lethal damage), and NSAIDs can cause clotting issues post-surgery, gastrointestinal issues, etc.
Not as much as you tearing your wounds open again because your body wasn't able to warn you.
You misread what I said. Pain is part of the feedback loop that keeps you from straining your skin, muscle and bones past their tearing/breaking point.
People who don't feel pain are many times more likely to injure themselves, especially when they already have wounds that might re-open through the wrong movement.
Pain is likely to stop wrong movements long before you can make your condition worse.
Mostly pain is a "desirable" sensory input. But it's understandable that people don't like it.
There's obviously cases where you want to prescribe strong painkillers - but if you're taking those you shouldn't be out and about anyways and have people watching over you.
For most post-op pain you shouldn't be on strong painkillers for long though, lest you undo the work your doctors put into you.
I think the US is much more liberal in terms of regulation, so it's very much up to the doctor. Mine is an expensive orthopaedic surgeon in NYC, he wouldn't have seen me as an addict with drug-seeking behaviour. Afterwards he gave me a prescription for the lowest-dose hydrocodone; I think I wound up taking it for about 3 days and then I didn't need it any more.
I was in pain, so I appreciated having the painkillers there to help. But I also appreciated that I don't want to form a habit, so I came off as quickly as I felt I could.
Fentanyl is not a safe drug. Period. It is a powerful and dangerous drug with dangerous and potentially lethal side effects and classified as such. It's also and incredibly useful drug, potentially of great benefit to people in severe pain - benefit that must be balanced against the danger and risk.
In controlled settings (e.g. in a hospital bed with physiological monitoring) many dangerous drugs can be used in a safe way, Fentanyl included. But that doesn't make Fentanyl a safe drug, just a drug that can be used safely.
In the same way TNT and rockets can both be used safely - neither are sensibly intrinsically safe.
> If someone overdosed and you breath for them (CPR or ventilator), you can just wait for the effects to wear off and they’ll be none the worse for wear.
I think this is too complacent. Aspiration is a real risk, they could choke, pneumonia can be life threatening. If somebody has overdosed, get professional medical care - management of the compromised airway is no DIY project.
Why the hell would “friends” do CPR for an hour and presumably not call an ambulance? Some friends. Good Samaritan laws wouldn’t protect you because a reasonable person might do rescue breathing but a reasonable person would also call an ambulance. Unless you are in a very rural area, a first-responder response to CPR in progress would never be an hour.
Water probably isn't the best choice, but it is cheap. You can dissolve at least 4.21 mg/L of carfentanyl in water. Call it 3 to be conservative.
Put 30 mg in 10 L of water. Each cL of water will contain the desired 0.030 mg.
Another way is to put half a pound in a 20,000 gallon swimming pool. That would get you 7.5 million of the above.
I think this stuff would be more soluble in ethanol. With that, you can solve the problem with multiple dilutions. It's like making homeopathic medicine but stopping before you run out of molecules.
You weigh out 3g and dilute them afterwards
Even though Fentanyl is unlikely to kill you, in terms of living a meaningful and fulfilling life an addition to fentanyl is effectively a death sentence and it is highly addictive, affordable, and readily available. Fentanyl is destroying families and crippling our social services.
Vodka is much stronger, and you can accidentally make a mixed drink that will knock your socks off. Wine has a large range of potency amounts, but is generally less potent.
The answer for alcohol is that, in most countries, every dose of it has the exact active ingredient ratio listed, accurately.
If you drank a glass of wine and discovered it was 3-4 times stronger than you expected, that would suck. If you drank a bottle of wine, and it was 3-4 times stronger, you’d be in a lot of trouble, but you’d probably live. 25 to 50 times stronger? You’re fucked.
People with substance misuse disorders aren't using medical grade fentanyl that is pre-diluted, they're using illicit fentanyl made in mexico. People are smuggling fentanyl in because it's easily available, and because it's so small it's easier to smuggle, and because it's much more profitable than heroin. The product entering the US is undiluted, and it's the dark web dealers or their customers who are doing the dilution.
Way to save face Vince, so the good old police still works to the benefit of society, but in a convoluted fashion where the underworld avoids making the public too angry and force the police to do it's job.
How about the idea that, like high explosives, nukes and child porn, the people involved recolonize them as inherently immoral and refuse to partake? Unlike, say, the ban on recreational drugs itself - which is the whole reason poisons like fentanyl became available.
The prosecution decided to hide the fact that the agent was on the take during the investigation until Ulbricht’s trial was over. It helped them to have a cloud of shaky and unprovable allegations of murder floating around.
It would have been too risky to their case to put the accusations of murder under the scrutiny of a trial.
It’s far more than just the word of a corrupt agent.
It's a shame the Supreme Court didn't hear that appeal based on the judge sentencing him largely based on something that he did not receive due process for.
That whole investigation was shady as hell even outside of the agents who were corrupt and got caught. Keep in mind, those agents were the professionals looking for criminals doing that kind of thing. They of all people should have been good at stealing those coins and not getting caught. How many of them succeeded and weren't caught?
Also if the murder for hire allegations were legitimate, why was the task force even attempting that sting in the first place? The corrupt agent was the one who allegedly persuaded Ross to order the hit in the first place while he was simultaneously the guy who had stolen the BTC to begin with. That's textbook entrapment and I can't imagine that a DEA agent of all people would believe for a second that that would ever have a chance at standing up to scrutiny in a court.
The prosecution also knew about the corrupt agent who was behind much of the work on the case before the trial but at the time that wasn't public knowledge. They illegally withheld that information from the defense. Not to mention that the prosecution lied about how they identified the IP address of the Silk Road servers in the first place.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/10/how_did_the_f...
Looking at that traffic log, I'd wager that half of the people on this site are knowledgeable enough to realize that the prosecution committed perjury. Parallel construction is unethical enough as it is, this isn't that. They flat out lied about how they identified the server.
I think Ross certainly deserves a great deal of jail time for his crimes but that trial was a travesty of justice.
1. The police have to have induced the crime. 2. The defendant's lack of predisposition for the crime.
As to 1., the agent was the one that stole the money in the first place. The agent was the one that approached him telling him that he needed to have him killed. The agent was also the supposed hitman. No rational person would conclude that the agent didn't induce him to commit that specific crime.
As to 2., DPR initially only wanted his location in order to scare him. The agent was the one that convinced him that he would just hide and he'd never get a chance to find him again. He had to convince him to order the hit, Ross Ulbricht was certainly predisposed to commit crimes, but not attempted murder specifically.
Police regularly arrest people with small amounts of cannabis, and the range of options they have include criminal prosecution which still happens.
I almost always hear about fentanyl in the context of "...the heroin was cut with with fentanyl". I read that statement like "...the heroin was cut with ultra-pure-super-heroin". Why wouldn't the addict cut out the "middle-man" and just use fentanyl? Legitimately trying to understand.
Being strong (potent) doesn’t mean dependency kicks in any faster.
Heroin I believe doses in the tens of mgs, which is hard to measure precisely but can be weighed on a twenty dollar scale. You could distribute fent in the same way Lsd is on blotter paper. The big difference is you accidently get a hot spot of Lsd it's not fatal.
Many addicts aren't buying massive quantities at once either nor are they getting it from the internet.
The only reason fent exists on the black market is it's stupidly easy to smuggle compared to heroin, a tiny thimbleful of it could be cut into something like a thousand doses. This works out for dealer economics, it's not to benefit the addict.
there were some articles/research that the harsher the Prohibition enforcement the more trafficking shifts into the higher potent stuff.
> The subjective effects of fentanyl are similar to those of heroin, with the exception that many users report a noticeably less euphoric "high"
https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Fentanyl (also of note is that heroin fentanyl has a shorter duration of action)
>Ocfentanil shows typical opiate-like effects like euphoria and relaxation. Users reported that it is less “cool” and euphoric than heroin, but it is more stimulant and has a very quick onset, after 3 min. The users also reported that it has shorter duration of action (3 h) than heroin
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5754389/
Whether or not that it is true, it may contribute to users not using it (obvious safety issues aside).
Today the problem is that fentanyl is produced by underground labs using questionable processes, so it is basically no different than "heroin" as far as the danger goes. The reason I put "heroin" in quotes is that in reality people cannot know what they are buying on the black market; maybe it is heroin, maybe it is fentanyl, maybe it is a mixture, or maybe they are about to become a case study like this group:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/medical-mystery-how-...
As mentioned in other replies, the problem with doing fentanyl directly is that it only takes a minute amount to kill, amounts that are difficult to measure.
Fentanyl is the kind of strength where a difference in dose the size of a grain of salt could be the difference between life and death.
No evidence is offered to support this byline -- no interviews with suppliers, no surveys, no web forum transcripts.
China gets:
1. Positive sentiment from US.
2. Crackdown on drug producers in China (which furthers the objective of having strict control on drugs with steep penalties, and making examples out of drugs dealers for CCTV).
3. To hand a blow to Chinese Triads exporting drugs and laundering money outside of China (e.g. bringing cash out of China): https://globalnews.ca/news/4149818/vancouver-cautionary-tale...
4. Tighter government oversight/control on the prescription pharmaceuticals market.
https://www.wired.com/story/hansa-dutch-police-sting-operati...
"Let me remove this gun from your temple. Thank me, now."
This is where it gets bad for a dealer. Because now law enforcement can pretend to be victim and trick dealers into unveiling their id. [drop site setups etc]
So you're selling heroin and figure "hey, I'll cut it and make more money". You add something inert and then add a tiny bit of a fentanyl and oops you added too much, now it's poisonous for users to take a "normal" dose.
It is ridiculously potent. We’re talking a normal dose of 10’s of micrograms.
However. I would argue diversion of Dsuvia will likely reduce overdoses as the quality control means you know exactly how much you’re taking.
Now, there are always a few "garbagehead" addicts that'll use whatever you got, but that's not common in my experience, since opiate addicts chase calm, sleepy euphoria and meth/cocaine addicts chase stimulating, energetic euphoria. Different scenes, different personality types. Probably different genetics as well.
> This substance is extraordinarily potent (i.e. active in the microgram range), to the point that the pure powder can result in a fatal overdose if spilled on one's skin. [...] It is strongly encouraged to wear gloves while handling, use volumetric dosing combined with a milligram scale
https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Fentanyl (notably heroin doesn't have the same warning)
Then you get cases where one distributor dilutes their product so much that their customers get used to taking very large amounts to get a high. Then one of those customers switches to another supplier with a "more normal" concentration and unwittingly overdoses.
Then there's the people that develop a tolerance to the drug over time, and keep trying higher and higher doses to get the same high.
And all of that is before you get into measuring errors and other mistakes caused by people doing complex chemistry without any formal training.
https://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/noras-blog/2018/05/true...
Imagine you have 100g of this stuff, and you have to dilute it with sugars. You need a ratio of something like 50ug fentanyl per 300mg of sugar.
Your 100g contains 2,000,000 doses of fentanyl. 2m * 300mg = 600kg.
So you need 600kg of sugar to correctly dilute your 100g of fentanyl.
Dilution is hard.
Also note that what I've meant was essentially about treating psychedelics the same way as opiates, not much about meth (which can be deadly in an indirect way (it doesn't kill by itself but given some time can easily screw a weak mind to the point of madness) for many people) nor about heroin (which can kill you quite literally). Nevertheless in both cases there always is a choice people are given many chances to make and in case of black market fentanyl there almost isn't.
I don't think "purely psychological" is implied by different people having different susceptibility to addiction. If it were purely psychological, wouldn't that imply a person could become addicted independently of ever taking the drug?
It is also important to emphasize that that's about just a single class of drugs you've mentioned. Popular psychedelics, although able to induce even stronger sensations usually don't cause even psychological addiction (although there are some rare people who start taking them every weekend, a normal person will hardly feel like repeating the experience soon and any kind of regular - it's just too intense psychologically and there also is tolerance, the acid wears off in some hours and won't really work until the next week) and (except some of them) hardly cause any harm (unless you're a psycho already - then you may happen to go nuts completely) or hangover. Opiates, at the same time, don't make you bright but just give a strong sense of relief kind of "I just feel good and uck everything absolutely" yet cause powerful physiological addiction, severe hangovers and serious risk of lethal overdose.
There indeed is, however, a problem of dishonest or ignorant dealers selling really dangerous substances like that to ignorant or naïve people telling them just that's acid or kind of but I believe this problem would be much less widespread if people could get safe psychedelics legally or even if the black market itself was allowed to develop healthier so dealers had to establish reputation and care about the customers experience. Also, as far as I understand, the major reason for this kind of drugs to be developed and marketed is because classic psychedelics are too hard to produce for underground labs so they have to consider cheaper and easier alternatives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_drug_trade_in_China
It's like saying you're gonna stop all the drug dealers in US to stop selling drugs, its very hard for China to stop all narcotics.
Heres an official report by the US-China Economic & Security Review Commission on Chinese Fentanyl Production: https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/USCC%20Sta...
and I quote: "China is a global source of illicit fentanyl and other NPS because the country’s vast chemical and pharmaceutical industries are weakly regulated and poorly monitored...Chinese law enforcement and drug investigators are unable to effectively regulate the high volume of drugs and chemicals the country produces.In many cases, the chemicals used to produce fentanyl and fentanyl-like products are illegally diverted from legitimate pharmaceutical uses, with criminals taking advantage of inadequate enforcement protocols to produce unregulated chemicals and NPS. Until 2014, a regulatory loophole allowed Chinese chemical companies to operate in a gray area of oversight, freeing them from inspection requirements and other certification systems. That loophole was closed in 2014 when China’s State Administration of Work Safety implemented new regulations on chemical production to improve management of nonpharmaceutical businesses, including enforcing stricter licensing requirements. Even under the new regulations, Chinese pharmaceutical and chemical companies continue to divert chemicals from legitimate pharmaceutical uses and adulterate legitimate pharmaceuticals during production.This makes drug enforcement within China difficult, as many manufacturers of fentanyl and other NPS are legitimate companies legally producing chemicals. Although some of these chemical manufacturers knowingly ship their products to the United States for illicit purposes, Chinese chemical and pharmaceutical exporters continue to operate with little oversight"
Do not get me wrong, I've seen the impact of Fentanyl and I want China to step up on crushing its production.
It's actually a pretty good example of situations where the fringe right and fringe left come together and hold hands.
However, the fact that fentanyl wasn’t illegal in China until recently and mail shipped from China is cheap, really opened up the flood gates until the authorities cracked down.
In the west you need legally accepted proofs, lawyers and all. See El Chapo, no matter what he is, his trial will last for MONTHS and appeals for years. All to prove that he did deal drugs to USA.
Now China skips a few things in the legal process and if they want they can assign 100,000-150,000 police officers to do a blitz and do serious damage to drug dealers.
Anyways, I ordered a small quantity of a chemical and normally they are shipped as hazardous materials, specially packed with all the necessary forms filled out.
Well this order arrived in my mail box (?!) as an unmarked package. I opened it and there was a small vial wrapped in what looked like old clothing. No customs declarations or anything!
What can we do about this? Direct trade punishments for allowing this to happen. Hit them the only place they care, in the bank account and this would stop Quickly!
Speak for yourself.
"We" landed on the moon too, but I had no part in it and you likely did not either.
The people dying of opioid crisis are of all ethnicities.
If you think the opioid epidemic is happening everywhere you have more research to do. This problem is targeted and deliberate.
"We" as in the nation or government? And it wasn't 2 centuries ago. We were colonizing china up until 1949.
People truly do not understand how much "we" ( as in the US and imperial europe ) screwed over china. I bet not 1 in a 1000 americans knows that the US were imperial colonizers in china even after ww2.
The map in this article should scare anyone who cares about a Soviet-style dictatorship taking over nearly every continent: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/18/world/asia/wo...
Your account seems to have taken a heavy turn into using HN for political battle. That's not ok, and we ban accounts that do it. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use the site as intended.
The rest of the world may be radicalizing and polarizing, but HN's mandate hasn't changed and isn't going to, therefore we have to ban accounts that are destructive of it. First among those are the accounts seeking to use HN as a battlefield, which (if allowed to) would turn this place into scorched earth.
Lol, thank god we have Mr. Enlightened Centrist Gackle here to let us all know the truth is somewhere in the middle. It warms my heart to know in 20 years when the country HN is based in has devolved into a genocidal (well, moreso than usual) hellscape, you'll be right there with all the other luminaries of our age admonishing the masses of the dangers of associating with the far-left Strasserites.
I have witnessed the killing and burning of bodies from 120 Tamils in Sri Lanka, which went unreported in Western media. I have witnessed a guy stabbing another guy in the neck within a parang (coconut knife) as my first experience when globe-trotting (I just turned 19) during a religious dispute in Banda Aceh. I have seen dead bodies of Burmese fishermen while teaching an Open Water Scuba class in Thailand (they are used as slaves by the Thai and then thrown overboard). All this happened a long time ago but it has shaped me in a way that made me more angry. I'm not an academic and I'm not a native English speaker but nor am I an arm-chair philosopher. I do still suffer from PTSD of my experiences, but it's no excuse to make political comments here probably.
Again this isn't an excuse for myself, but I hope it gives context on why I feel more strongly and said the things I did. I'm happy to continue lurking and promise to cut political motivated arguments out in future.
This can easily be exploited by the West, similar to how the Soviet Union used US hegemony to start (and win) numerous cold war conflicts.
China may never see any returns on that infrastructure when these countries inevitably switch sides in the new cold war.
The chinese labs wouldn't be pumping out fentanyl if people weren't demanding it. If it isn't china producing it, it would be produce elsewhere ( even in the US ). Stop with your scapegoating rhetoric.
> They see this as just revenge for the British selling opium in China.
It wasn't just the british. A huge part of the US industrial and political power derived from colonizing china.
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/28/opinion/the-opium-war-s-s...
And we were a colonial power in china until 1949. Well after ww2 ended.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_Patrol
Though I disagree with your fearmongering and your erroneous equating of the US with britain, I do agree that we have to come to terms with china one day over our historical transgressions and their future ambitions. It's inevitable at the very least that china will want the US our of east asia and possibly want retribution for a century of brutal colonization/humiliation/rape of china. How these issues get resolved will determine the future of the US, China and the world in the 21st century.
Unsuspecting people are becoming addicted to Fentanyl because it is being cut into other drugs they are taking without their knowledge. It started with Heroin and has now moved into other drugs. Even Xanax has been found to have Fentanyl in it. So if you think this came about via supply & demand you should do some more research on the topic.
The idea here is that dealers would stop selling drug after drug as the death toll mounts. If they chose to keep selling, the deaths would presumably make the drugs easier to trace.
I'm not sure if it would be legal or ethical for the government to do this. But they did it to alcohol during Prohibition.
No, that would not be progress
It is a bit strange to consider that we still do poison alcohol to prevent, say, people from drinking mouthwash (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol):
> Denatured alcohol, also called methylated spirit (in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom) or denatured rectified spirit, is ethanol that has additives to make it poisonous, bad-tasting, foul-smelling, or nauseating to discourage recreational consumption.
Unfortunately, despite a widespread cultural understanding that it's dangerous to consume denatured alcohols like mouthwash, some folks still do (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogate_alcohol):
> Surrogate alcohol is a term for any substance containing ethanol that is intentionally consumed by humans but is not meant for human consumption. [...] Most people turn to these as a last resort either out of desperation, being underaged or being unable to afford consumable alcoholic beverages (with homeless alcoholics) or due to lack of access to drinking ethanol (for example with prison inmates and individuals in psychiatric wards).