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Comment by rkoten | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't the same logic apply if you're a legitimate provider?

Sort of, but the calculus changes. In a regulated market, costs are likely to be dominated by the cost of the product, cost of service, regulations and taxes - shipping a truckload of product legally isn't going to come close to that. But with illegal drugs, cost of transport is one of the biggest contributors to cost, and so taking steps to minimize that is worthwhile.

For instance, cocaine costs ~2k/kg in backcountry Columbia, but ~20k/kg in US cities [0] (at least at the time the article was researched). And when your transport costs dominate that much, almost every way to reduce volume and weight is justified.

0: https://www.businessinsider.com/from-colombia-to-new-york-ci...

You’d rather have a truck load of legal goods than a briefcase full of illegal goods. Illegality is a big cost.

Not if the equivalent value was the same. The briefcase is easier and less conspicuous to transport.

Transporting a truck of legal goods across a whole continent and multiple countries is much cheaper and easier than a briefcase of illegal drugs.

The total cost of risk-free (i.e. fully insured) delivery of a truckful of goods is trivial compared to even quite cheap products; while that briefcase would pretty much have to double in value after that long trip to make the transport profitable.

That briefcase will increase in value ten fold over the journey. So my point stands, easier to transport the briefcase and the returns are better. The risk is higher but that is why the returns are higher.

Probably? Hospitals use fentanyl all the time and I’d imagine they have no problem with dosing. It’s probably pretty great to have enough pain killers on hand for an entire hospital and not needing 100x the space (or whatever the scale is)

Funny how you say that.

Fentanyl solution for injection that hospitals get is a lot less potent than the hydromorphone solutions for injection that they can stock.

(50mcg/mL vs 10, 20, 50 or 100mg/mL).

As for the actual dosing... fentanyl is a lot more forgiving than morphine or hydromorphone, as measured by therapeutic index.

This is very true! Fentanyl tends to cause less respiratory depression at higher doses than opioids like morphine.

The ODs are mainly because people don’t know what they are buying.

I believe fentanyl can be provided in a relatively safe form if it was legal.

No because of the increased risk of death means you might get a worse reputation if people OD.

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