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Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#141

Post by amanaplanacanal »

rayiner wrote: post #96
323 wrote: post #20

All drugs should be legalized. That is the only solution. You should be able to buy cocaine, heroin, fentanyl at the local grocery store. No question asked. Maybe even subsidize it for poor people who can't afford market prices. The local pharmacy should provide training on how to inject/consume them safely and give for free the associated consumables.

Damn libertarians. You can also ban drugs, imprison or kill the drug dealers, and ostracize the drug users. Works in Asia.

In the US we are moving away from that model because for the user, the cure was worse than the disease.

Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#142

Post by hardwaresofton »

This seems like a huge problem to solve. Anyone know of anyone going after solving it from interesting new angles? Are there any VCs funding ideas like this?

I can think of at least a few angles that might be interesting since I'm too uninformed to know any better:

Is it possible to create mRNA vaccine that block opioid receptors?

What happened to the scanning tech mentioned in the post? That thread seems to just stop with "failure to innovate". We have ML that feels like it could do that now. There's that open robotics repository of scanned objects -- it sounds silly, but why not scan every single car (maybe with some help from automakers) so there's a reference and train with that?

As far as the physical problem of scanning, can we scan cars/trucks/containers/etc with sonar rather than visually and let a computer figure it out?

Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#143

Post by alldayeveryday »

badpun wrote: post #128
alldayeveryday wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> In 1920, still a significant part of the population lived in absolutely abhorrent slums.

Define significant part. There are people in 2020 living in absolutely abhorrent slums. Most major US cities have areas meeting this definition.

> People on average worked 60 hours weeks,

Unsure if this is true. Even if it is, probably more accurate to say of those people who worked, they worked an average of 60 hours per week. But in 2020 a higher percentage of the population is working. Women in the workforce has grown exponentially. This too is a major shift / difference.

> Overall, the conditions of living were so harsh that people were numbing themselves with alcohol on a massive scale, ultimately leading to Prohibition Act.

Suicide rate in the US has been steadily climbing decade over decade. What does that say about our living conditions?

Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#144

Post by ladeagaytf »

rayiner wrote: post #96
323 wrote: post #20

All drugs should be legalized. That is the only solution. You should be able to buy cocaine, heroin, fentanyl at the local grocery store. No question asked. Maybe even subsidize it for poor people who can't afford market prices. The local pharmacy should provide training on how to inject/consume them safely and give for free the associated consumables.

Damn libertarians. You can also ban drugs, imprison or kill the drug dealers, and ostracize the drug users. Works in Asia.

Turn off the narcan tap and let the wildfire clear the underbrush… or commit to sisyphean forestry policy.

Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#145

Post by amanaplanacanal »

thehappypm wrote: post #132
refurb wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a theory that seems correct - when a drug is banned, the black market moves towards the most potent version available. Even during prohibition it was way easier and profitable to make bootleg whiskey than beer. Why? It’s easier to conceal, packs the most punch, and is the most profitable by weight. Instead of making heroin legal, make opium legal. Or even weaker opioids like codeine. Then people who wanted a…

Marijuana seems to be an exception to this. After legalization it’s easier to get more and more and more concentrated versions

But I would assume the more dangerous "research chemical" versions aren't used any more in those areas where legal weed is available.

Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#146

Post by AbrahamParangi »

jack_pp wrote: post #46

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

Drug abuse is a much smaller problem in east Asia where it is intensely criminalized. In Singapore drug trafficking is a capital offense.

Drug abuse is a massive problem in those parts of the US where it is de-facto decriminalized on the west coast.

I think the evidence is fairly clear on what would constitute a solution, rather the debate is on whether we’d be willing to pay the costs of that solution.

Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#147

Post by cies »

vorpalhex wrote: post #37
cies wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about the legitimate/medical/supervised usage, it the recreational use that kills. Marijuana (MJ) is used a lot recreationally; if people to use MJ instead of Fentanyl the OD cases would not pile up like they do today.

That is not supported by the research, marijuana use seems independent from opiod deaths (neither harming nor helping).

Hard line policing is the problem, not MJ/opiates itself.

If you get in as much trouble doing/buying/selling/etc MJ as Fentanyl, you might as well do the latter.

If MJ is legal, many would stick to that.

Same for MJ-to-alcohol: and the alc producers know it, they lobbied fiercly against legal MJ and when it became legal (like in Canada) they were the first to invest heavily in it.

Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#148

Post by rayiner »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #141
rayiner wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn libertarians. You can also ban drugs, imprison or kill the drug dealers, and ostracize the drug users. Works in Asia.

In the US we are moving away from that model because for the user, the cure was worse than the disease.

Whatever the US is doing is working great! Annual drug overdose deaths have only quintupled since 2000: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-11/u-s-overd.... Almost 40 times higher than Bangladesh with only double the population. Bang up job guys.

Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#149

Post by pfkurtz »

We have 2 options for dangerous things: 1) Regulate. 2) Criminalize.

If lots of people do it, (1) is better, even though it normalizes the danger, because we get seat belts and pharmaceutical controls and the ability to innovate and discuss changes in public.

If the people involved can be cast as lower moral status / other, then it becomes a problem of "Dealing with THEM", and we get (2). This is correct if the primary activity is a real, moral crime (theft, extortion rackets), which changing consciousness and numbing pain aren't. This is almost NEVER correct in the case of voluntary economic transactions (for which the societal benefits of regulation have proven to be enormous), unless those interactions are inherently theftlike/extortionate/exploitative-involuntary, because it creates a spiral of violence.

So the questions are: Should pain numbing / consciousness altering be the province of organized crime? Should we devote substantial societal resources to a failed project of stopping people from altering consciousness and numbing pain, or change to make that fact less damaging? Should one part of society get to impose the violence-filled option on everyone else?

Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#150

Post by TheCenterSeat »

I thought ycombinator tried to stay away from political stuff? I've been around for years and that was usually the case. Why is there a popular post about drug addiction and the response from "Washington"? This isn't tech related.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments

I'll quote the guidelines here:

"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity."

Most comments here are political. Did I miss a blog post that says to be politicans?

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