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Comment by NoMoreNicksLeft | Hacker News Reader

Purdue manufactured opioids in measured doses without unsafe adulterants.

Guess what? Junkies lived. Turns out that when they get a clean high manufactured by competent pharmaceutical engineers, they tend not to be found catatonic by callous law enforcement who say "fuck it" and refuse to save their lives with the naloxone they have with them.

When did junkies start dying? With the supply of oxy dried up because the DEA shut down pill mills, they had no other options than dirty street heroin that it turns out is mostly just fentanyl and carfentanyl.

I have no clue how this is considered an improvement by the media that reports on such things, or why so many are so eager to buy it.

If El Chapo started selling clean/safe drugs that didn't kill people, how the fuck would he be anything other than a goddamned hero? How many are dying of overdoses every week again?

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When a company pursues to market an addictive drug, and knowingly sells it to counties that had 5 to 10 times more opioid prescriptions than people, that's illegal and that should be stopped.

Knowing this and allowing them to do it anyway would be a dystopia I want no part of.

> that's illegal and that should be stopped.

It should be legalized.

Death-by-opiate/opioid-overdose shrank while they were selling this. Shutting down the pill mills killed people. Like, more people are dying now than otherwise would. And you're ok with that?

I guess when the DEA makes up bullshit, you're just happy to parrot it.

> Knowing this and allowing them to do it anyway would be a dystopia I want no part of.

You're in the dystopia now. You're just insulated from it. Something close to 100,000 people will this year because they're using dirty street drugs and fucking elephant tranquilizer instead of Purdue's safe drugs.

WTF. I wish I got to live in a world where evil was committed by supervillains doing it deliberately, rather than this clownworld where people do it and think they're the good guys. You should be ashamed of yourself. Go do some fucking self-reflection.

You're absolutely correct, prohibition is what is actually causing all of the overdose deaths. If we had a legal and regulated system of drugs then the supply would be high quality and consistent and people would know exactly what they were getting

Just because you feel a certain way, doesn't mean you should act on it -- you're bound to make a less-than-optimal decision when emotions get in the way.

The above is the equivalent of finding out your child has been an alcoholic for the past decade, and abruptly shutting down all liquor stores in your town.

Your child is going to start having seizures, and your town will be incredibly irritated at you for being so hasty.

Let's stop using analogies since they can be atrocious. Your analogy ("Oh it's just like alcohol") is even more so. Alcohol poisoning deaths are a rounding error compared to actual opioid deaths.

Death from alcohol ODs are around 2400/year. The last year of opioid deaths from OD's in 2022 were 106,000.

The analogy is apt, because those opioid deaths are a direct result of someone taking advantage of others' emotions to set wide-sweeping policy, with no regard for anyone else -- causing drastic harm to people.

This is no different from the example above.

Pharmaceutical companies push opioids on doctors -> doctors push opioids onto people -> someone gets uppity and decides something should be done now -> opioid access is quickly curtailed -> people now need to get their fix because pharmaceutical companies have upregulated their opioid receptors, causing life to be living hell -> people go acquire opioids through the black market -> it's laced with fent and then people die

Alcohol poisoning was common in the bootleg era, when some people got uppity and decided something must be done now about alcohol -- and people do as people do, went to go get their fix from shady suppliers with tainted product; then they were seriously injured or killed.

> When did junkies start dying? With the supply of oxy dried up

Citation needed.

or you can try not to get people addicted in the first place

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