blanketlamp

> A sobering reminder that the negative effects of recreational drugs last long after the hangover. I’m seeing an alarming trend of young people reading “harm reduction” material online and assuming they know the full picture of the risks of drug use.

I don't think that's ever been in question. Harm reduction isn't some utopian ideal that safe drug use == nobody ever suffers long-term negative effects.

Conquering those demons takes a lot of time, introspection, and often outside help. Harm reduction is about making sure you live long enough to hopefully get there.

> A university acquaintance went acute schizophrenic shortly after developing a pot habit, that could be a coincidence but the timing is suspicious.

Early adulthood is when mental illness often sets in, especially illness like Schizophrenia. You're implying cause one way without considering the other likely alternatives:

1) Your acquaintance started smoking a lot of pot because of the onset of early schizophrenia symptoms as a coping mechanism.

2) They are unrelated and early adulthood is just when people experiment more with drugs, and also when conditions like Schizophrenia start to manifest.

> A second cousin became mentally retarded immediately after smoking a joint. He's now a 30 year old who can't tie his own shoes.

I don't know what to say to this other than nobody's ever established an even remotely plausible link between these two things, assuming you aren't being hyperbolic.

I think it’s more that Eli Lilly and co don’t need to deal with the same supply issues/challenges that warrant the innovation. If they want to make Meth, they can probably just get a bunch of pseudoephedrine delivered.

I think it’s perfectly reasonable to offer an opinion borne out of reasonable ignorance, but the critical part missing most of the time is that you have to be open to actually being corrected without becoming combative.

Too many people have their ego and sense of self worth wrapped up in being correct on the internet, regardless of the topic.

Oh great find! I didn't see that in my search results but might've just had the wrong keywords.

Yeah, I'm not surprised - motor vehicle accidents were always super high on the list for that demographic so if fentanyl is even remotely close to the number reported above it would easily surpass everything else.

> So fentanyl is the drug most people overdose on, or is it killing more people than heart diseases, traffic accidents, etc do?

The numbers for other types of fatalities are available so you could do a quick comparison:

42,000 motor vehicle fatalities in the US for 2021 (all ages), so way above that

Heart disease is more unclear, I mostly found age-adjusted risks/etc. It looks like at best I could find, around ~400,000 americans in that age group have heart attacks (eg. MI) each year, though the death rate is obviously going to be lower than that.

So, it's definitely possible. IIRC "death by misadventure" and the like are super high on the list of causes of death for young people (18-25), so very possible fentanyl is way up there if not at the top.

> This seems to be the reason why the SEC doesn't have a clear-cut case to protect FTX customers, but does have a case to protect rich VC crypto-bro partners.

I mean, given that FTX.us was supposedly completely isolated from FTX.com isn't that true?

Assuming (and I understand this is a big assumption) that SBF is correct that FTX.us deposits were completely isolated and US customers can be reimbursed in full, the only US citizens harmed by this would be Sequoia et al.

Even if it turns out US customers are actually left holding the bag as well, does the SEC even have clear jurisdiction over FTX on that? Maybe? Wouldn't the DOJ criminal charges be much better wrt nailing him for that though?

Seems much easier for the SEC to charge him with defrauding investors, as that's pretty much a slam dunk case at this point and also clearly the jurisdiction of the SEC.

You can draw analogies here to Capone and tax fraud etc. etc.