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Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

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Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#101

Post by e40 »

beat wrote: post #83

Not to comment on the politics, but... I had fentanyl during a medical procedure a while back, and I can totally see why it's so addictive. It was wonderful . Both pain and anxiety were totally wiped out, and and the comedown was clean and fast, with no ill effects at all. It's the most pleasant drug I've ever experienced. As long as this kind of high exists, people are going to take it.

I had nausea for 2 days following a procedure where I had it. Compared to the same procedure a few years before with Demerol, which I cleared from my system in a few hours, fentanyl was horrid.

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#102

Post by joncrane »

Johnny555 wrote: post #63
cowboysauce wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There doesn't need to be anything sinister about it. Fentanyl is cheap and potent. You can take cheap, low quality heroin, mix it with a little fentanyl and sell it for more profit as high quality heroin. However, if it's not mixed perfectly, you end up with "hotspots" of fentanyl. If someone ends up with a hotspot they can easily overdose. The occasion overdose also attracts more users because it gives the impressio…

The occasion overdose also attracts more users because it gives the impression of potent, high quality heroin. Is that really the case? Do people think "Oh my god, that stuff almost killed me, must be good stuff -- give me some more!"

It's because users of opiates can build up a really high tolerance. Like an order of magnitude more than would knock a non-user off his rocker will be barely enough to feel anything.

And heroin is really expensive. So imagine someone who is extremely frugal buying expired food. Only cranked up to 10.

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#103

Post by atomical »

DmenshunlAnlsis wrote: post #77
smallnamespace wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the downside of having global economic integration (buy anything from anywhere for the cost of USPS shipping) without political integration. It's the same type of problem as Greek debtors vs. German creditors except in a different context. Fentanyl analogues are not a problem in China, hence the relative slowness in cracking down on them. The supplier is in China, but the buyer is the West. Why does moral cul…

Fentanyl analogues are not a problem in China, hence the relative slowness in cracking down on them. History suggests they will be. China happily exported and exports Ketamine, and are now dealing with a massive problem of heavy Ketamine addicts. It’s gotten so bad that they’ve lobbied internationally to sanction ketamine, which ran into a brick wall for good reasons.1 1 Ketamine is the only general anesthetic that d…

Ketamine has potential as a novel treatment for depression.

It's not as addictive as some people would suggest. I have a prescription and it makes me sweat profusely and puke. Hardly enjoyable and I have no interest in dissociation because I want to live in the present.

Making Ketamine harder for patients to access is going to destroy a lot of lives. People with depression like myself are already being taken advantage of by Ketamine infusion clinics that charge exorbitant rates. These doctors, often not psychiatrists, could prescribe a lozenge for their patients to take at home if they were serious about helping depressed patients and not lining their pockets.

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#104

Post by Koshkin »

smallnamespace wrote: post #58
nacho2sweet wrote: post #49

Fentanyl is a huge problem in Vancouver, where we are usually ground zero for all new opiate trends. Besides killing over 1100 people a year in BC, the money also seeps back into our overheated real-estate market through casino money laundering. It is a crazy cycle. I have no idea why world governments and our own don't say and do more against China. Spineless.

This is the downside of having global economic integration (buy anything from anywhere for the cost of USPS shipping) without political integration. It's the same type of problem as Greek debtors vs. German creditors except in a different context. Fentanyl analogues are not a problem in China, hence the relative slowness in cracking down on them. The supplier is in China, but the buyer is the West. Why does moral cul…

Well, who was to blame for the 19th century Opium Wars? The Chinese?

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#105

Post by chiefalchemist »

imjustsaying wrote: post #80
chiefalchemist wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But that still doesn't explain why the dealers' approach is to (literally) kill off their subscribers. That's a complete 180 from Successful Drug Dealer 101.

The point of my post was to let you know how easy it would be to accidentally kill someone due to mismeasuring the dose. Calibrating a scale before and after measuring a dose then verifying with a second method is something dealers aren't used to doing. The dealers' intended approach is likely not to kill off their customers. I'm willing to bet they simply don't realize what to look out for.

I think you underestimate the general intelligence and how biz savvy the average drug dealer is.

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#106

Post by [deleted] »

thousandautumns wrote: post #36
vis52 wrote: post #10

In Europe there are a lot of these so-called "research chemicals". They are basically illegal drugs but chemically they are different enough that they aren't illegal. I think the most well-known example is 1P-LSD.

There was a Times article several years ago about the rise of synthetic cannabis and they said legislators can't keep up with new chemical formulations. They take several months to study and ban one chemical, and the manufacturers turn around and tweak it slightly and it's a "new" drug that hasn't been made illegal yet.

[deleted]

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#107

Post by nimrod0 »

theNJR wrote: post #87
dqpb wrote: post #68

This is revenge for the "100 years of shame". China is at war with the West.

I've long been confused why this isn't talked about more. It's seemed very obvious to me that this is exactly what is happening.

No, it's not. You're doing random pattern matching. Chemical engineering has been outsourced to China and factories there are making/exporting whatever people want to import, including industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The supply chain has been moved around with globalization, that is all. There is no political motivation behind it, much less political control.

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#108

Post by mindslight »

yayadarsh wrote: post #78
mindslight wrote: post #62

> A police officer suspected the windows of her silver Mitsubishi Galant were tinted too darkly, then found her license was suspended. He arrested her, and a search of her car Straight up parallel construction, until demonstrated otherwise. Gotta love that strategically built weaseling - "suspecting" the tint and "suspended license". Regurgitating this uncritically shows just how little credibility the entire article…

It seems like you are implying that because they might be obfuscating a hypothetical "source" that the findings are invalidated. What would you have the author do, instead?

The author could have investigated whether the windows ever actually were found to be too dark (or whether it was just a pretext), and what the actual reason for the suspended license was (eg something the person did, or the quite common no-notice suspension arising from some bureaucratic mess).

Without that, they're really just uncritically repeating the story of one biased and routinely corrupt party. Which mirrors the rest of the article, as it seems to be a hit piece setting up a pretext for going after these Really Bad Foreign People. Ostensibly with the goal of further empowering the agencies and broken legal regime that is responsible for the fentanyl crisis in the first place.

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#109

Post by Fricken »

smallnamespace wrote: post #58
nacho2sweet wrote: post #49

Fentanyl is a huge problem in Vancouver, where we are usually ground zero for all new opiate trends. Besides killing over 1100 people a year in BC, the money also seeps back into our overheated real-estate market through casino money laundering. It is a crazy cycle. I have no idea why world governments and our own don't say and do more against China. Spineless.

This is the downside of having global economic integration (buy anything from anywhere for the cost of USPS shipping) without political integration. It's the same type of problem as Greek debtors vs. German creditors except in a different context. Fentanyl analogues are not a problem in China, hence the relative slowness in cracking down on them. The supplier is in China, but the buyer is the West. Why does moral cul…

Any supplier thinking long-term I'm sure will recognize the economic downside of killing off their clientele. It's in their interests to self-regulate and enforce stricter quality control standards to mitigate fatal overdoses.

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#110

Post by girvo »

JshWright wrote: post #94
beat wrote: post #83

Not to comment on the politics, but... I had fentanyl during a medical procedure a while back, and I can totally see why it's so addictive. It was wonderful . Both pain and anxiety were totally wiped out, and and the comedown was clean and fast, with no ill effects at all. It's the most pleasant drug I've ever experienced. As long as this kind of high exists, people are going to take it.

As a paramedic, it is absolutely a double-edged sword. It is a phenomenal tool for pain management. Used as intended it much better than other options (historically, morphine). It is not the least bit uncommon to have weeks that include administering fentanyl therapeutically for acute pain management, and administering Narcan to counteract the effect of Fentanyl taken "recreationally".

I find that interesting. Heroin and morphine both have a much nicer high than Fentanyl, taking IV recreationally — at least they did for me, back when I was an addict
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