Is this somehow different fentanyl for the stuff that in the UK gets handed out in litre bottles to old ladies with dodgy hips? Because the whole point of fentanyl is the massive therapeutic window and difficulty of overdosing.
You must be thinking of something else. Pure fentanyl has a lethal dosage in the microgram range.
Both things can be true, and are in the case of fentanyl. The lethal dose is small in absolute terms, perhaps as low as 2mg[0]. The therapeutic window is large in that doses around 50mcg[1] are useful for pain relief in adult patients. That's 1/40 the potentially lethal dose.
And yet marijuana is still illegal in my state. The impact of legislation like Citizens United and the outsized influence of large institutions on American politics is really unfortunate.
What do institutions and Citizens United have to do with marijuana legalization? MJ has been illegal for decades in the U.S., before Citizens United. The fact of the matter is that this is a problem with the electorate, not CU or institutions.
This would be solved if drugs were decriminalized and testing kits were very easy to use and come by but I guess a lot more people have to die before society as a whole acquires common sense
Why are people using Fentanyl? Maybe tackle that instead of further marginalizing people who use it? Are they using it to escape the grinding anxiety and desperation of their shitty lives? Are they using it instead of alcohol, again as escapism from reality? Is this use any different from how people used alcohol in past decades? I guess the point I'm poorly trying to make is that people aren't suddenly different to t…
This has the same energy as “we don’t have a gun control problem. We have a mental health problem” which every Republican says after every mass shooting
Sort-of-related, for Americans reading this, from a Brit, when I watch US TV programmes, the inclusion of drugs (prescription and illegal) in scripts is so matter-of-fact, it's actually shocking. Comparing like-for-like programs (police dramas, hospital dramas, thrillers), the UK version will invariably have entirely different plots. Sure the US != UK, but it's so weird. Isn't the USA the only country other than NZ t…
Prescription drug sales reps market to doctors , attempting to convince them to prescribe certain drugs more frequently. Who pays for the drugs is largely irrelevant to that interaction, but I wouldn't be shocked to learn it's illegal in the UK.
> Prescription drug sales reps market to doctors, attempting to convince them to prescribe certain drugs more frequently.
I dated a girl who went into pharmaceutical sales. They're basically bribed. They get kickbacks in some form or fashion.
They get invited to speak a medical conferences by drug company reps, those conferences just happen to be at luxury retreats.
This would be solved if drugs were decriminalized and testing kits were very easy to use and come by but I guess a lot more people have to die before society as a whole acquires common sense
Nah. You need legalization and regulation so that people can buy known doses of known substances. Decriminalization is nice for keeping users out of jail, but as long as manufacture and sales are illegal the supply is still going to be fucked.
And yet, it never got as bad as right now. Congrats, prohibition has made the situation worse.
1 out 200 people addicted to opiates during that time is worse than the reported 10 million users[1] of opiates in the country. Overdoses is higher because Fentanyl is stronger and easier to overdose off of than morphine. 1. https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-epidemic/opioid-crisis...
Am I missing something? 10 million/330 milllion is 6x higher than 1/200.
Why are people using Fentanyl? Maybe tackle that instead of further marginalizing people who use it? Are they using it to escape the grinding anxiety and desperation of their shitty lives? Are they using it instead of alcohol, again as escapism from reality? Is this use any different from how people used alcohol in past decades? I guess the point I'm poorly trying to make is that people aren't suddenly different to t…
> I guess the point I'm poorly trying to make is that people aren't suddenly different to those in the 1970s, 1920s, or the 1800s. They have a similar environment with similar anxieties, pains, responsibilities, etc etc. Not in agreement on this. 2020 looks profoundly different than 1920, for example from the lens of western societies. People are more atomized, have less friends, are having less kids, are getting mar…
You can't be serious. In 1920, still a significant part of the population lived in absolutely abhorrent slums. People on average worked 60 hours weeks, and often in extremely unhealthy and dangerous conditions (for example, molten iron being accidentally spilled on some poor soul in Carnegie's steel mill wasn't an uncommon occurence). There were no antibiotics, so family deaths were much more common (leading to grief and depression). Overall, the conditions of living were so harsh that people were numbing themselves with alcohol on a massive scale, ultimately leading to Prohibition Act.
Operational question, why do the DEA and ATF exist? It seems that they are A. Failures* and B. Lack any distinctive law enforcement mission. Couldn't we just roll their missions up into the FBI? Perhaps the Secret Service as well? This feels far more efficient than several fragmented failures occurring simultaneously. *Eyeballing success by the number of murders with illegal firearms and drug deaths.
> why do the DEA and ATF exist
At some point organizations exist for the benefit of the organization only. What would success look like for people at DEA/ATF/etc?
The only true business value is trying to put oneself out of business.
Does the UK have those bizarrely obtuse not-an-ad-for-prescription ads like in Canada?
I can't think of any although maybe some erectile dysfunction drugs are (don't know if they're prescription only or not). Otherwise, there's ads for cold remedies, cough medicine and analgesics. The idea of advertising prescription drugs seems bizarre to me as surely you'd want your doctor's opinion, not whatever's on daytime TV
I would have to check more of Ofcom guidelines, but it's likely in there somewhere that drugs (with exceptions you mentioned), like cigarettes are explicitly prohibited from adverts.