What about since? That's ancient history in drug terms
In other words the US numbers are roughly 50x as bad.
I mean... If you vote to let violent criminals out of jail in the hopes violent crime will go down, something is missing up there. This has been my universal experience with democrat voters. It is what drove me away from the party. They'll trust 'experts' ridiculous advice over their own common sense. Most of them are extremely partisan, and will quickly label any independent candidate as a Republican, which is enough reason to not vote for them.
Either way, democrats have been in charge of cities for years in this country and it simply hasn't turned out well.
I often align with democrats on fiscal policy, but the voting bases inability to use common sense reasoning and their overuse of the cliche of everything being 'complicated' has driven me away
Border security is very much a partisan issue, with the far-right being very much opposed to freedom of movement.
Even with the CBS "slant" for migrant support, they do say this:
"According to the DEA, most of the fentanyl is smuggled over land across the U.S.-Mexico border. Smaller amounts are smuggled by air from China."
(TikTok is also available in France btw)
With a steady supply of heroin, there is no demand for synthetics like fentanyl, and dealers dont need to sell fake heroin - they can sell the real thing.
So the question is why?
I argue it’s because heroin is so plentiful there is no need and if you try and sell fentanyl people will stop buying from you.
Essentially unsafe drugs aren't popular. Available but not mainstream.
Here in Switzerland they get clean heroin from the state, not surprised fentanyl is still a niche phenomenon.
Darknet works like Amazon, but unlike Amazon reviews are usually real. Bad actors get blamed.
If they do, and there is a known risk, why did nobody in the distribution chain use a $15 test kit to verify the quality? Someone must have bought a few hundred pills at once to redistribute them, $15 and 5 minutes wouldn't matter.
Or general save drug use. You have a pill you haven't tried yet. No way to check properly. So you only take a bit and see if it turns out as expected.
This fentanyl thing is new and wasn't a thing when I popped pills. However there have always been dangerous pills. We've checked them, online, at labs, in person and small doses. If they were shit we throw them.
I believe the main difference is culture. We were aware of the dangers, we had mobile labs at parties and flyers about the current bad pills.
(Other than that Xanax and prescription drugs are nowhere as popular in Europe than they appear in the US)
Also worth noting in my state possessing kits design for testing for illegal drugs is a felony. [note: not legal advice]. No one reputable is going to risk a felony to sell drug testing kits for shitty margins.
https://www.azleg.gov/viewDocument/?docName=http://www.azleg...
https://dancesafe.org/drug-checking/
That said, how many users actually test every single drug they purchase? Especially if they are addicted and using multiple times per day?