Comment by green_man_lives | Hacker News Reader

Comment by green_man_lives | Hacker News Reader

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green_man_lives

The reason why they can cut fent with other drugs like in the article is due to the fact that it is an unregulated black market.

Also the reason why fentanyl/opioids are such a problem is because of our LEGAL pharma industry pushing drugs for terminally ill cancer patients onto people with chronic pain-- then regulation cracking down on said companies and forcing people to go out into the streets to keep their addiction going.

Here is a music video of Insys (the opioid company that got sued into oblivion) bragging about "titration" which was a sales tactic to increase people's dosages over time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtwFZwjCSTE&t=213s&ab_channe...

The "War on Drugs" was not initiated in order to look after the welfare of US citizens. It was to more easily criminalize non-whites and subversives.

The solution is very simple if you approach policy with empathy for the addicts themselves: harm reduction to prevent overdoses ("clean" opioids and distribution of narcan) with free rehab programs funded by taxpayers.

But unfortunately for whatever reason the United States is allergic to empathetic policy, so instead we will just keep going down this road until there is a major shift in public sentiment.

The illegally cut drugs would still exist, unless the government was giving fentanyl away for free, which would probably lead to far more ODs and addicts than the current regime creates.

I live in Colorado and I guarantee you there is still a black market for weed, since they can supply it for cheaper than the legal dispensaries - paying no tax and having no testing or other health regulations allows that to happen for pretty much any product.

The existence of a black market doesn't negate the impact of legalization.

In North Korea and China there is a massive black market of movies because there is no alternative distribution network.

In the USA there is a smaller black market because piracy offers benefits over streaming services.

If the government decided entertainment was a human right and gave everyone free streaming subscriptions, the black market would shrink further because the utility that piracy provides would decrease.

Now if your goal is to prevent fentanyl from being cut with other things then you would want to shrink the black market. I personally think that a state monopoly on drugs would be your best bet. To eliminate a black market totally you would just give infinite fentanyl away for free.

But if your goal is to reduce overdoses then you would need to balance availability with safety, which is a tricky utility function. Adding requirements like rehab, or rationing fentanyl, or only letting people get high in a location with medics on standby only increases the utility of going to the black market since you can get high without jumping through hoops for Big Brother.

However I don't think anyone in our government or media seriously takes any of this into consideration. It seems like a 50/50 mix of moral judgements on addicts and using drugs as a talking point to manufacture border crisis narratives. Any mainstream discussion of the topic is usually just to scare people so they will be more susceptible to whatever inhumane "solution" is proffered by a talking head immediately afterwards.

Which is exactly the response you see in the OP I was replying to. "Well this policy decision isn't perfect, but the alternative is far worse" is basically the opinion that the media wants us to have when they run stories like this.

That's a tax problem, not a regulatory problem. Or do you still have moonshiners running around with their trunks full of white lightning?

Actually… kind of common in parts of Kentucky. My son in law arranged for us to buy a gallon to subdivide for gifts. Guy showed up with moonshine in the trunk. This is rural Kentucky, so you can't just have a transaction, you have to talk and be social for a period of time. So the seller brought out the AR15 from the trunk and there was some drinking, talking, and can shooting in the hollow… then we bought and paid and he was off to the next customer.

It came in a gallon water jug, like you would buy water in a grocery store. Ultimately I think that was its demise. When I went looking for it to subdivide I couldn't find it. But I had used a gallon of spring water to prime a well, I suspect I grabbed the wrong jug and primed the well with moonshine. The previously clear well kept producing a cloudy material that year.

No great loss, it isn't a "fine drinking" product. They make it from sugar since that's cheaper and cleaner. It's very much a "get you drunk cheap" product.

I didn't think fentanyl was what people were trying to buy. I was under the impression fentanyl was used to make the main product more potent and you could use less of the main product reducing costs. What people want to buy is the main product, not fentanyl.

So if controlled then there would be less use of fentanyl and less ODs?

People buy fentanyl on purpose now. Their tolerances are so destroyed that regular black tar or powder heroin (even if cut with fentanyl) won’t do anything for them anymore.

Crazy.... Can't imagine the desperation to risk your life over a high.

>"But unfortunately for whatever reason the United States is allergic to empathetic policy, so instead we will just keep going down this road until there is a major shift in public sentiment."

The US is not a monolith and there are parts of the country which are moving towards such a policy in a de facto way on a local level. Usually by turning a blind eye towards federal enforcement or having the DA deliberately choose not to pursue drug cases against individuals.

>"The solution is very simple if you approach policy with empathy for the addicts themselves: harm reduction to prevent overdoses ("clean" opioids and distribution of narcan) with free rehab programs funded by taxpayers."

If I'm not mistaken this is basically the policy of San Francisco. Time will tell how effective this kind of policy actually is.

> If I'm not mistaken this is basically the policy of San Francisco. Time will tell how effective this kind of policy actually is.

I would generally agree with that approach but I think that there are so many other issues at play that will claw back any progress that would have been made.

Without a comprehensive solution to mental health, housing, violence, etc-- it wont really have any effect. At least not in a city like SF with so many issues.

Are there are a lot of addicts actually enrolling into rehab?

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