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How the fentanyl crisis' fourth wave has hit every corner of the US

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Re: How the fentanyl crisis' fourth wave has hit every corner of the US

#2
Fentanyl needs to be made legal and sold at grocery stores. In 2-for-1 packs, fentanly+narcan, at affordable prices. Even better, subsidized prices for poor people which can't afford it.

That would solve the fentanyl problem, which is solely due to it being illegal and impure.

More generally, all drugs need to be decriminalized and sold at affordable prices and pharma-grade quality.

Re: How the fentanyl crisis' fourth wave has hit every corner of the US

#3

Fentanyl needs to be made legal and sold at grocery stores. In 2-for-1 packs, fentanly+narcan, at affordable prices. Even better, subsidized prices for poor people which can't afford it. That would solve the fentanyl problem, which is solely due to it being illegal and impure. More generally, all drugs need to be decriminalized and sold at affordable prices and pharma-grade quality.

I think it is the opposite. People are looking for fentanyl free drugs.

Re: How the fentanyl crisis' fourth wave has hit every corner of the US

#4

Fentanyl needs to be made legal and sold at grocery stores. In 2-for-1 packs, fentanly+narcan, at affordable prices. Even better, subsidized prices for poor people which can't afford it. That would solve the fentanyl problem, which is solely due to it being illegal and impure. More generally, all drugs need to be decriminalized and sold at affordable prices and pharma-grade quality.

Not exactly. But generally making less harmful drugs legal would help - generally the more prohibition the stronger the drugs become.

Re: How the fentanyl crisis' fourth wave has hit every corner of the US

#5
Fentanyl is one of the few drugs I can buy all the anti-drug propaganda on given the insane death rate compared to other drugs (I remember meth being advertised on tv as deadly)[1].

But it's the direct result of making alternatives harder to get and harder to produce.

[1]https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd...

Re: How the fentanyl crisis' fourth wave has hit every corner of the US

#6

Fentanyl needs to be made legal and sold at grocery stores. In 2-for-1 packs, fentanly+narcan, at affordable prices. Even better, subsidized prices for poor people which can't afford it. That would solve the fentanyl problem, which is solely due to it being illegal and impure. More generally, all drugs need to be decriminalized and sold at affordable prices and pharma-grade quality.

Better to allow doctors to prescribe heroin maintenance. In fact this was tried in the UK back in the 1980s (and earlier) and is generally regarded as a success: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin-assisted_treatment

Re: How the fentanyl crisis' fourth wave has hit every corner of the US

#7
post #3

Fentanyl needs to be made legal and sold at grocery stores. In 2-for-1 packs, fentanly+narcan, at affordable prices. Even better, subsidized prices for poor people which can't afford it. That would solve the fentanyl problem, which is solely due to it being illegal and impure. More generally, all drugs need to be decriminalized and sold at affordable prices and pharma-grade quality.

I think it is the opposite. People are looking for fentanyl free drugs.

I don't disagree. At your local grocery store you should have a drug aisle with cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, MDMA, mushrooms, all pharma-grade quality. So you would know exactly what you are getting.

Re: How the fentanyl crisis' fourth wave has hit every corner of the US

#8

Fentanyl needs to be made legal and sold at grocery stores. In 2-for-1 packs, fentanly+narcan, at affordable prices. Even better, subsidized prices for poor people which can't afford it. That would solve the fentanyl problem, which is solely due to it being illegal and impure. More generally, all drugs need to be decriminalized and sold at affordable prices and pharma-grade quality.

I used to share a similar position until I realized: drugs are bad, actually, and there should be substantial friction in making them available to people.

Disincentivizing drug consumption is a good thing. The war on drugs obviously leads to some absurdities - e.g. drug cartels, unnecessary incarceration - and I much prefer the Portuguese model.

But making fentanyl in particular available in the grocery store would be bad; some substantial number of people would die who wouldn't have died otherwise. Some substantial number of people who would never have tried fentanyl would give it a try.

Some sensible balance needs to be struck between a free society and preventing people from e.g. leaving live landmines in their parking lots. Doing things which inevitably kill people/mess up their lives without active violence is still bad, and should be heavily discouraged.

Re: How the fentanyl crisis' fourth wave has hit every corner of the US

#9
One thing you can do is have some narcan (naloxone) on hand. It's available without a prescription at national brand pharmacies. Many insurance plans have a $0 copay for it, almost all would be under $20. Useful even if you don't know anyone in your life that would use fentanyl. There's any number of situations where it could happen.

Re: How the fentanyl crisis' fourth wave has hit every corner of the US

#10
Non US person here, so feel free to call me out on BS. IMHO people who do fentanyl already have pretty serious mental and/or existential issues going on, like who tf would play russian roulette like that? Sounds more like a societal problem than a mere drug distribution regulation problem to me.
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