Fentanyl Is Killing American Kids. Most Don't Even Know They're Taking It
thefp.com
thefp.com
I'm finding this hard to process. What this journalist appears to be saying is that he's about to write an article about the dangers of fentanyl laced drugs. And the way he's going to do that is by telling us about a recent death that by his own admission is yet to have anything to do with fentanyl?
>He was poisoned.
That's a hell of a sentence to put in it's own paragraph when the conditional it's predicated on is burried in the previous paragraph.
It just seems such a poor way of writing about presumably is actually a real issue. It's such a frustrating article, it tells a story of a girl who was meant to be taking adderall, but died of a fentanyl overdose. I wish they actually explored that - why would someone take fentanyl in the place of adderall?
>As part of the organization I launched last year, Not Even Once
Oh right. It's not a journalist at all. This isn't reporting, it's an activist pushing an agenda with dodgy misleading facts. It's pretty egregious this site hasn't made it clear this is just an opinion piece from a campaigner.
>Oh right. It's not a journalist at all. This isn't reporting, it's an activist pushing an agenda with dodgy misleading facts.
The "journalists" in the media do worse than this all the time. An activist going after a common issue that everyone knows is a problem gets a bit hysterical or dramatic to reel people in, perish the thought!
If you see bullshit, call it out.
> The Free Press is a new media company founded by Bari Weiss and built on the ideals that once were the bedrock of great journalism: honesty, doggedness, and fierce independence.
This rag isn't just publishing activist nonsense as investigative journalism, it's doing so whilst actively trying to sell itself as adhering to higher standards than everyone else.
Slipping in that you're a motivated activist 90% of the way into the article is dodgy as hell, and it goes a long way to explaining some of the extremely weird logic early in the article. Test strips for Fentanyl are apparently bad? Well if you want to focus on solutions to the actual problem, you've missed the point - they're bad because they are a practical alternative to the reheated 1980s "Just Say No" movement the author is trying to push.
This article would've been fine as an opinion peice but pretending it's real journalism is just disingenuous and actively makes me question even the basic facts of the article.
>I'm so tired of this. No, it's not an excuse to say "It's fine this guy is writing misleading politically motivated drivel, other people do it too!". Firstly I don't care what other people do, and secondly go take a look at that website's about page -
I don't care what the site's about page says either. News sites publish opinion all the time, and it doesn't take much of a sleuth to figure it out. It sounds like you are only itching to discredit this for other reasons, like you approve of drugs and also hate people who hate drugs.
If the mere sight of this article upsets you this much, go touch grass. Seriously.
Compare that to this site - no mention of opinion anywhere, the byline describes the author as "reporting on" the topic, and the tail of the article refers to him as a writer for the Free Press, so not traditionally an Op-Ed role. If I were editing a publication, I would feel the responsibility to disclose up front that this author was an activist, not a journalist.
I was kind of reticent to actually come out and say "This website is obviously acting in bad faith and we should actively be hostile to things it suggests because of that".
I tried to express reasonable and valid criticisms of its fundamental failures to adhere to basic ethics, and in response you want to accuse me of approving of drugs and hating people who hate drugs.
I think we can leave it to anyone reading this conversation to decide which of us needs to go touch grass.
But you did it anyway with great gusto.
>Go to the NYTimes website, go to the opinion section, at the top of the page you'll find a big banner saying "Opinion" and a byline that describes the author and the detail they're contributing to the opinion side of the paper.
You're not wrong that it should probably be labeled as an editorial or something. But if you rely on such labels you're doing it wrong. Very few things, even in the precious NY Times, are presented with zero slant, regardless of the section it's in.
>I tried to express reasonable and valid criticisms of its fundamental failures to adhere to basic ethics, and in response you want to accuse me of approving of drugs and hating people who hate drugs.
It's just as obvious that you are writing from a biased standpoint as it is with the author of this article. I don't know the exact source of your disdain but it is clear to me that it isn't simply the technical or moral issues you've mentioned thus far. I think you have a vested interest in drugs being permitted more despite the risks, perhaps because you are or have been a regular user.
>I think we can leave it to anyone reading this conversation to decide which of us needs to go touch grass.
Lol it seems I touched a nerve.
LOL
The danger with fentanyl is, that it can be even put on weed in small drops, to make garbage weed seemingly strong. That is messed up and dangerous.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_...
I like to stroll around cities aimlessly but have met so many drug addicted, homeless and mentally unwell people just walking around like zombies with apparently no help it's almost unbelievable in the last years.
Last time i visited NY it had become so bad it honestly killed all joy - there were wandering rambling half naked people everywhere. I've never seen anything like it in the EU despite poverty in the East. I also tried taking the subway just a little bit out of the rich downtown areas and wow, abject poverty, dirt in the streets, open drug use just a few kilometers from the centre with no end in sight.
After watching various documentaries about the Sackler family and the medical industry in general i've come to one conclusion, it's entirely the fault of your own deregulated oligarch controlled system and not "the brown, yellow or russian people on the other side of earth that are doing the bad things yet again".
You have a wonderful country and so many great people so it really saddens me it's become so dystopian, so unequal and with so apparently little safety net for the very vulnerable.
Did you watch any documentaries about how it’s shipped from China, trafficked over by Mexican cartels, and entirely sold by Hondurans in SF?
I don’t think that existence of the massive purchasing power disparity between SF and countries where those drugs are manufactured is a giant revelation to most people.
And i'm not saying this to make the EU faultless, it's a shitshow over here too and for that many people are blaming middle easternes, there's always some foreigners or far away to blame and it's embarrassing.
Last time i visited family in Manchester i saw similar developments but on a much smaller scale, and it's because of shit domestic politics not foreign actors.
Let's blame the policy makers, the plutocrats and the people with the most influence for once and not let them excuse bad developments with hybrid warfare or some other idiotic scapegoat while they sip wine from their yachts - it's the oldest play in the book.
> no it was the yellow people on the other side of earth. Jesus christ.
In the historic visit of Xi Jinping to the US months ago, care to guess what one of the few topics POTUS and him talked about? Cracking down on shipments of fentanyl and precursors. Maybe instead, POTUS and all his advisors should've been more focused on the Sackler family. That'll sure help all those unfortunate souls dying from fentanyl today.
First off, have you ever visited a major city anywhere? You're going to see mentally-unwell drug addicts wandering around wherever you go. It's simply a fact of life in a metro area. Dirt in the streets? I mean, what are you even getting at here?
Nice, you took the subway out of the "rich downtown areas a few kilometers away". So that could be Midtown, that could be Williamsburg, that could be Downtown Brooklyn for all we know. Tell us where exactly you went that you saw "abject poverty and open drug use"? Because as someone who lives and works in the areas within the radius of what you seem to be describing, I see a vibrant, competitive, world class mecca of culture and business.
Don't ever get on here and slander NYC like that. Your cities wish they could be as cool and interesting as what we've got here. NYC is a global powerhouse and to come on here and call it dystopian is delusional.
I don't know where you're from, but I bet it's not even close to as relevant as New York City.
These problems don't exist in many EU cities though you're claiming these problems exist everywhere.
To say that these problems don't exist in many EU cities is a lie. What are you smoking? Because please pass it over.
Yeah, no. You most definitely don't see mentally unwell drug addicts wandering about in Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore, Hanoi or Hong Kong.
Also, let's talk abject poverty and economic disparity. Take a stroll around Mumbai and you'll see human suffering on a scale that will humble you. Try being a migrant construction worker in Dubai - many will call that modern-day slavery.
Also, that's quite a climbdown from your original statement.
You listed several cities, excluding Mumbai, that have some of the harshest drug laws on the planet. And I'd say that the suffering and squalor in Mumbai is more disturbing than a few mentally disturbed individuals on the subway in NYC.
Not sure how you think you're winning here.
If you want to get into a petty argument over details of what I said, then you're missing the point.
I often go weeks without seeing any homeless in my city and it's always a bit of a surprise when I do. I think they mostly have mental issues and drink - I can't recall any sign they were doing any other drugs.
Absolutely nowhere in Europe will you experience that with that frequency yet, even though it's getting worse. Rough areas? Many. The weird guy here and there in the Subway, off course - but almost each and every time you drive in the subway - hard no! I lived in london for a few years and never really encountered any totally strung out people with their pants down, i did multiple times in NY in those 3 weeks.
Also off course i'm not talking about Williamsburg, a good example was going just north of the richest areas in Upper East side into Harlem, and wow what a contrast.
I live here, I ride the subway every day. Are there mentally unwell people who ride the train? Sure there are. Is it even close to "100% of the time"? Absolutely not. It's like you had this fantasy about NYC and when you came here and it wasn't this sterile Disneyland you imploded. I could say the same things about Paris and London. Rampant pickpockets, drug use, poverty.
Follow the money... And how do you change this? The oligarchs, the 1%, make money but don't have any of the problems. How can you make them want to change and fix society?
I have argued here before that the US is not a real democracy. There are 2 parties that share power and are in service of the 1%. The rich and powerful minority has to be protected from the 99% majority of the people. How can you make the powerfull people care about all the drug deaths?
Maybe not as much in the pill scenario, but anyway -- some of these kids are 13. That's one of the real problems (beyond the systemic one).
That and we need labeled pill packs w/ secure traceable verification codes. If fentanyl is coming in as fake adderall we need kids who have legitimate prescriptions to know that what they get is real.
The other thing would be the technology with blood ox sensors to alert first responders. This might be hard to get right false positives but could help.
It's still a problem, but your prescriptions are safe.
> The other thing would be the technology with blood ox sensors to alert first responders. This might be hard to get right false positives but could help.
This feels like a hard sell. They're going to need GPS so you can find the person, and perma-tracking teens and adults is generally unpopular.
In a practical note, I'm also not sure whether someone's O2 SAT dropping is an early enough warning for first responders. It might be, but if someone's O2 SAT drops then they're already having trouble breathing, and EMS still needs to get a truck out there, find their body and administer Narcan before their O2 drops too low.
Should say
"He poisoned himself."
People have been overdosing on drugs for the entirety of written human history and probably before.
Drug trafficking is punishable by death.
Think of all the people dying from fentanyl.