7 out of every 10 Fentanyl pills seized by DEA contain a lethal dose
dea.gov
dea.gov
So drug traffickers mix the fentanyl with baking soda, tramadol, starch, whatever cheap additive they can get their hands on. Each trafficker adds more, to make the product nonlethal, but mostly to increase bulk, and increase profit. Unfortunately, they use blenders, kitchen mixers, and their bare hands. They don’t invest in pharmaceutical grade equipment.
The mix is very uneven, so when an addict takes a hit, he or she may either get no buzz at all, get a nice high, or die of an overdose. Each hit is like Russian roulette.
If only drug traffickers had better equipment, and quality controls. The way things are today, when you buy illegal drugs you don’t know what the hell you’re getting.
I advocate legalising Opium straight away. I think Heroin is a step further than required.
How many people have to die from synthetic opiate overdose? The obvious public health measure is to legalise the much safer natural alternatives.
So no, not they way they did it.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/oregon-governor-signs-...
To be fair, Oregon never reached the point of legal sales channels for drugs. Drug users still had to purchase drugs from a dealer. Their supply chains were the same as in other states.
Actual legalisation would establish a legal purchase channel. That would come with quality controls, et cetera.
Deaths from prescriptions were relatively rare - but it created a huge number of addicts with escalating tolerances.
Then as progressive efforts were made to reduce distribution, pill-mills and secondary markets appeared (i.e. crime). Then with further restrictions, addicts moved off oxy entirely, onto heroin, and then fentanyl flooded in - and bodies piled up.
Just "legalizing" might reduce the harm, but would increase number of addicts. Prescriptions for existing addicts is good for them - but dealers aren't just going to give up, they'll focus on creating new users.
I don't think I've ever seen a perfect solution - but things like distributing naloxone or creating supervised places to self-administer seem like no-brainers in the meantime. Resistance seems to come from a somewhat ugly place where people see users dying as the problem being solved.
The problem with local approaches to dealing with the homeless crisis is that the better you do, the worse your problem becomes. Portland doesn’t just grow homeless on trees, they have one of the busiest greyhound stations in the country, and everyone else is just so much at dealing with the problem.
Criminalising drug users does nothing about the social problems, and makes them worse
You have a romantic view on drugs. In such, you either are really young (and still idealistic, which is good but lacking life's experiences) or you never drink more than a beer and don't really have contact to the addicted.
The aim should be to get them off this, so they stop doing EVERYthing just for getting the next high. The aim is not to even supply more of these highs to them.
You have to take it away and to help the people. Or they will take something away from you (just as it is meant in EVERYthing for the next high..)
I say no. I'm not agreeing here.
You say "take it away" like there is a magic wand that hasn't been used, and just needs to be waved to make drugs disappear from existence. But rather this idea is actually just the widespread approach of prohibition, which has been tried for the past five decades, with its main result of causing great personal and societal harm.
Currently, we already have plenty of opiate addicted people seeking out their next high, and they have little problem getting it. If there is a problem getting it, it's basically a lack of money - which means it can be straightforwardly solved by stealing. Their dealer, in the best case, wants to keep them alive and addicted rather than ever pushing them to seek help. And every fix they get has a large chance of outright killing them due to lack of quality control and standards.
So no, I don't buy into this vague handwaving that the ongoing highly corrosive and grossly ineffective legal regime deserves credit for keeping the problem from being somehow worse. At this point we've already had five decades of trying fundamentalist prohibition, and it is squarely responsible for the current state of affairs.
Because opiates are forbidden and you have to fear your freedom if you handle them with lack.
For example it's not possible to get them prescribed easily. If you got them prescribed, it's an act of getting it. We have the BTM law where everything is written down.
Instead, America's physicians prescribed that to easily in former times and still doing it (pain killers on oxy basis?). The drugs and addiction epidemic started much earlier. And now it's already full swinging.
It's not the problem of prohibition, it's the problem of way too easy to get access and hands onto. And you call it prohibition.. I name it regulation. There is a difference between these both two words. So, America should regulate it much more. Each world's country should regulate this the much the people can't by compounds or ready for usage stuff. This is the case for addictive drugs, which in my eyes includes alcohol too.
But, may be I'm wrong in here and I don't see the true "why" But I'm thinking, I'm not wrong in here though.
https://nida.nih.gov/publications/drugfacts/prescription-opi...
So what you want basically is to open the market, to talk to people not to do it (so they educated enough to decide on what they want) and then hope that the abuse of drugs won't get more and even sink? And that with highly effective and addictive stuff? NO, H3LL!
You seem to have absolutely no experience with drugs. Absolutely No Experience with opiates. I have, I one got it in the hospital and I remember it as a wonderful time. I would like to repeat that experience, but I know, if I do , I might get into big trouble and am strong enough not to touch it. But if one would give me 1 pill. I would take it because it was high pleasure experience. There my drug addiction career would have started.
You talk about quality controls and standards. I'm talking about ban it completely, make everything unreachable for everyone. Make it highly regulated. That's the only way not to have people easy try it and get hooked on the feeling, like me. You can think what ever you want, but I'm happy that we're living on a democracy and laws are for each and every ;) and there are still enough people who so No, like me :) I do it out of experiences.
At best what we can achieve is what Portugal achieved, which is mixed success that no one is really happy about.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru...
> After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that engage with people who use drugs.
"We had a great success. Then we defunded it and it quit working."--Cue shocked Pikachu face
Also I don't see why there needs to be leverage over users to enforce laws against dealers. Does buying food need to be illegal in order for the government to regulate food safety? Of course those laws for dealers need to be sensible like only selling pills made with Good Manufacturing Practices and other quality control, otherwise we're right back to draconian prohibition.
If you can’t go after the users, you have to find some other way to get to the dealers. Portugal has that problem, since they can’t go after use, the police aren’t finding an effective way to go after dealers either.
I am advocating legalisation, not decriminalisation.
Um, yeah, that's not gonna work ...
It also doesn't help that many of these drugs are still illegal at the federal level. Consequently, you cannot create a legal manufacturer who can sell drugs of a known quality since the Feds can kick their door in at any point in time.
What’s the Bull case for more people having easy access to opium products ?
Alcohol is a much more serious attacker of reason
Prohibit it?
Yeah, nah!
Provide safe alternatives
MDMA for example
A large group of people partying on MDMA is a wonderful thing.
Close to True Bliss
I highly recommend it
Everything "natural" that can make you addicted to, is the same as synthetically made stuff that makes you addicted to.
The problem is here not in the market or lacking regulations. The problem is that you have personality changing, highly addictive, dangerous stuff. Mary Jane, alcohol and tacos is enough of regulated.
Advocating here doesn't take into account that the advocatee kills. It's not harmless.
Opium is not a great killer
The dangerousness comes from the speed of getting addicted to and the damage it causes: health, sociological and financial.
You arguing like opium is like weed. Hell. No! Get your experiences.
That is untrue
Opiates have few long-term health detrimental effects, exciting addiction
(Amd, reportedly, constipation)
https://monographs.iarc.who.int/news-events/volume-126-opium...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9159125/
Just YouTube a little bit around and take a look at your "that's not true". Look how addicts living a wonderful life. Picture you living sich a wonderful life :)
Drugs are bad. Whatever makes you addicted, should be banned and highly regulated. Not the opposite.
When you take weed as example - that's not a problem because it doesn't make your body addicted to (but your brain, which is really not that big problem). I'm consuming that since 25y (in average daily) and comparable lot with 5-10J per day. If I'm about to be empty, I start to get nervous because I don't want not to smoke. But if I decide to stop it, I have 2 weeks where I'm really not a good guy. But that's all. It's more the nicotine. If I can't smoke, I search for a solution so I can.
If you smoke opium, try to do that:) if you take fentanyl, try to do it. So you basically have no experience and talking about "it should be allowed because it's just obstipation and a little addiction" in my eyes.. to naive look. The same I see with the young people who are against prohibition by the state but for self decisions.. LOL. they're the first one getting hooked on it.
Steady on, no need to swear
I have extensive experience of addiction
Opiate addicts cab easily be useful productive members of society
It is how herion addiction was treated in England until the 1970s when the Americans threatened them into stopping
People who are at rock bottom are often drug addicts to, but in most cases it is not the drugs that get them there, and it is the police, law, and stigma that keep them there
But I think it's better not to let the addiction even start, what would inadvertently happen if the handling of such substances is not regulated (not necessary completely unregulated in the means letting it up to the people to decide whether they want to try it or not)
Because it's the beginning, and the possibilities are very high that people start to like it and can't handle such freedom.
The same discussion is right about in Germany. From the 1st of April, weed ist partially legalized. So we have had people who did consume before (like me) and who now start to try it and - in between this both groups - people who did not consume frequently, but start to consume at higher levels (not like me, daily, but more often then once, twice a month..).
In Portugal (fully) and Spain (some kind of fully legalized) weed has been legalized since a long enough time for them to get the counts. O don't have sources by hand, but they tell statistically, around 30 percent more consumption and around 30 percent more of psychological problems emerged since legalization.
I don't care the numbers, except there was a rise since deregulation. I believe it's more than 30 percent. With me personally nothing changed really. So I think this 30 percent are from people consuming irregularly (now regularly) and new starters. The old consumers won't change their behavior much, because it was already at high levels before. So I'm thinking, if stronger things are not regulated anymore, then we will have a lot of addicts .. and with a stuff, that makes you strong addicted to, it's not fun anymore.
So that's why I'm arguing against it.
I don't believe some education will stop people from doing it. Nowadays we have like a really strong education on this topic. Each one knows what drugs do - bit still people try it. And they switch to even harder drugs if they can't get theirs...
Just look at the alcoholics. Of they don't have booze, they drink others like perfume (in the end, it's just alc).. or they try crocodile (the Russian horror drug) for example.
So we don't know how the people will behave and I'm thinking mostly negative about that, as you already got it punched in the face by me. Sorry for that mate.
There is no evidence for that.
The evidence is that drug addiction has more to do with social issues than chemistry.
The book https://chasingthescream.com/ is a good read on this issue.
And just to admit:
Alcohol and tobacco both have much higher burdens in terms of disability-adjusted life years.
For alcohol see this plot: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/dalys-from-alcohol-use-di...
For other drugs of abuse (excluding tobacco) see
Raw opium is much harder to kill yourself with.
For an addict herion overdose is almost unknown. True. It does not suppress the breathing reflex like morphine and synthetics.
Putting powerful deadly drugs in an easy to swallow pill is not a sensible approach to recreational drugs
Opium lounges are a much better idea. I am keen on those.
Having drugs that don't kill people before they grow out of them would be a good thing.
And, if even Michael Jackson or Prince can die of an overdose, there is something very, very wrong with our entire system.
Wrong
Addiction is the main feature, and if the substance has no artificial scarcity, addiction is easy to manage.
There is no basis on harm reduction for the drug policies being pursued in most of the world
Many
I came of age in a culture awash with herion
I have first hand knowledge of the harms done to drug addicts by criminalising them
But opiates taken over a relatively short time can and often do greatly impair CNS neurotransmitter systems and downstream behaviors—-in some cases causing almost irremediable dysfunction. This happens to a sizable subpopulation of humans; more than 10% of physician-prescribed oxycontin users. Genetics and social context modulate vulnerability.
This is definitely not “little harm”.
That is untrue
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stewart_Halsted is a counter example
"Throughout his professional life, he was addicted to cocaine and later also to morphine...."
My rejoinder could be 10,000 peer-reviewed papers in this millennium.
Who pioneered keyhole surgery
> rejoinder could be 10,000 peer-reviewed papers in this millennium.
Nonsense.
Boy did ever I take a sharp turn towards the political center on this in the years since. Some regulations have a very high return on investment, and controlling/banning the crap out of fentanyl is one of those.
We would be better off if people could purchase drugs legally from places that have stringent quality control so doses could be properly controlled.
US drug policy is not about harm reduction or life saving, and never has been.
That's because they do it after at least decades of use and for a much smaller percentage (if opioids were used by the same number of people, we'd be knee-deep on corspes in the streets), and they don't affect nowhere near as much (if at all) the general functioning or mental health of their users.
Even the average user's health is not really that affected, unless they get C after decades of use. There are much worse offenders (like eating and a sedentary lifestyle).
Is that true? I am not denying it, but the opiate overdose rate is staggering.
Whether they are a fair comparison I'm not sure. It might be more accurate to say that while fentanyl can kill you, cigarettes make you live less long, rather than to say they kill you. No one drops dead from lighting a cigarette. Meanwhile, if it weren't for unreliable dosing due to black market pressures, I'm not sure regular, reliably dosed opiate usage would kill you slow the way cigarettes do.[citation needed] Anecdotally, I've noticed that ex junkies often look ten years younger than they have any right to.
But I don't trust our governments to administer such a policy justly. I think the false-positive execution rate would be more than I could stomach.
Genuine question: How does it make fiscal business sense to kill your customers after one hit?
Edit: thank you all for your informative replies
It doesn't. Even making the generous assumption that the DEA is being honest here, what constitutes a lethal dose for a non-user may be substantially less than what constitutes a lethal dose for a heavy-using addict.
She was completely coherent, you would have a hard time knowing that she was the least bit altered, but she had something like 550mcg in her system. For a patient of her size with no tolerance, they'd likely administer 50mcg or 100mcg for regional anesthesia. It's crazy how much tolerance can build.
Intellectually I would love to know how it affects her. Does she require ever-increasing doses? Did the first time put her to sleep? Is her driving impaired? So many questions…
That's how much tolerance can build. Last one of these I read about was the singer to GWAR.
Towards the end, he was on Actiq, a lozenge form of fentanyl citrate iirc. Supposedly it was strong enough to be fatal for someone without any opioid tolerance.
These pills are probably much the same. Strong enough to get someone high who has built up a tolerance to everything else, but also strong enough to kill the uninitiated.