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7 out of every 10 Fentanyl pills seized by DEA contain a lethal dose

dea.gov

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Re: 7 out of every 10 Fentanyl pills seized by DEA contain a lethal dose

#71

Post by cameldrv »

hehhehaha wrote: post #47
worik wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More drugs? Why is that bad?

Because we simultaneously give people the freedom to do whatever they want to do, and also catch them when they suffer the consequences of their actions. IMO, you either have freedom and responsibility, or control and care. I'd be ok legalizing drugs tomorrow if non-drug users do not need to subsidize the care for drug users.

The problem is that responsibility comes from reason, and drugs like Fentanyl are a direct attack on your faculties of reason. A lot of Enlightenment ideals fall down when faced with hyper addictive things IMO, and we just keep inventing new ones.

Re: 7 out of every 10 Fentanyl pills seized by DEA contain a lethal dose

#72

Post by cdelsolar »

tomcam wrote: post #13
mikeyouse wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In college I worked in a hospital where one of the nurses was abusing fentanyl by taking the 'waste' and ordering doses for patients and not administering it. Eventually people caught on and confronted her, she offered to take a toxicology test to prove her innocence so they drew her blood. She was completely coherent, you would have a hard time knowing that she was the least bit altered, but she had something like 5…

I’m incredibly fat (300 lbs) but they never have problems knocking me out with a light dose because I have zero experience with recreational drugs or alcohol. They need to up the dosage substantially for heavy weed users. Intellectually I would love to know how it affects her. Does she require ever-increasing doses? Did the first time put her to sleep? Is her driving impaired? So many questions…

Hmm, there are definitely fatters.

Re: 7 out of every 10 Fentanyl pills seized by DEA contain a lethal dose

#73

Post by robwwilliams »

worik wrote: post #27
huytersd wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legalizing opiates is silly. It only takes a handful of times to get hooked and people currently use alcohol for months on end to get through hard times. Anyone with even a slight propensity for substance abuse would be an addict within a year. Contrary to the popular narrative it’s not super simple to get opiates and honestly it’s not on most people’s radars to even seek it out.

> Anyone with even a slight propensity for substance abuse would be an addict within a year There is no evidence for that. The evidence is that drug addiction has more to do with social issues than chemistry. The book https://chasingthescream.com/ is a good read on this issue.

Both! Sure: little risk when there are few or no drugs in a specific social setting, and no peers are using drugs. So it is true that social setting can be determinative in extreme cases. But if drugs are available and some peers are users then genetic variation definitely modulates risk of addiction to drugs that greatly degrade function and even mortality risk. I am sure you know last year’s excess death attributable to opiates and ilk—-now well over 100,000 in 2023— four-fold higher than in 1990. Team Sackler/Purdue Pharma, lax regulation, and greed all around, get lots of opprobrium but no jail time.

And just to admit:

Alcohol and tobacco both have much higher burdens in terms of disability-adjusted life years.

For alcohol see this plot: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/dalys-from-alcohol-use-di...

For other drugs of abuse (excluding tobacco) see

https://www.paho.org/en/enlace/burden-drug-use-disorders

Re: 7 out of every 10 Fentanyl pills seized by DEA contain a lethal dose

#74

Post by bsder »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #68
mindslight wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are not intrinsically expensive chemicals. A small charity could give it away for free. I would wager dysfunctional drug addicts don't value their time too highly, and wouldn't be put out by having to talk to someone every day to get their fix. Meanwhile it's a great place to push interventions. It's obvious fundamentalist prohibition is straight up not working.

If you gave it away for free, how would the OD rate not go up? You will still have the street market if you are at least somewhat restrictive however; that is unless we start enforcing laws against dealers again, but that isn’t going to happen without any leverage over users. At best what we can achieve is what Portugal achieved, which is mixed success that no one is really happy about.

There's never money for treatment, but there's always money for police and prison.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru...

> After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups, including the street teams that engage with people who use drugs.

"We had a great success. Then we defunded it and it quit working."--Cue shocked Pikachu face

Re: 7 out of every 10 Fentanyl pills seized by DEA contain a lethal dose

#75

Post by newzisforsukas »

worik wrote: post #6

Do you think legalising safer drugs, like Heroin, would be a sensible step? [Edit: I do] I advocate legalising Opium straight away. I think Heroin is a step further than required. How many people have to die from synthetic opiate overdose? The obvious public health measure is to legalise the much safer natural alternatives.

There are probably ways to distribute a legal and safe mixture of recreational opioids with some portion being an opioid antagonist that would prevent abuse at the levels that lead to gross addiction (see suboxone). Or some novel molecule that has those properties. Raw opium wouldn't be that though.

Re: 7 out of every 10 Fentanyl pills seized by DEA contain a lethal dose

#76

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rayiner wrote: post #42
crooked-v wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oregon legalized it and then skipped doing any of the other stuff that was advertised as coming with it, like free addiction treatment, social programs, etc. It's a 'we've done nothing and we're all out of ideas' approach consistent with the state's approach to homelessness at various levels, where agencies won't even spend the money they already have because they don't even know roughly how many homeless people ther…

The argument was that the drug problem was caused by prohibition, but obviously that wasn’t the whole of it. The argument that the public should pay a bunch of money to deal with drug problems is a different argument.

> argument was that the drug problem was caused by prohibition

To be fair, Oregon never reached the point of legal sales channels for drugs. Drug users still had to purchase drugs from a dealer. Their supply chains were the same as in other states.

Actual legalisation would establish a legal purchase channel. That would come with quality controls, et cetera.

Re: 7 out of every 10 Fentanyl pills seized by DEA contain a lethal dose

#77

Post by mindslight »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #68
mindslight wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are not intrinsically expensive chemicals. A small charity could give it away for free. I would wager dysfunctional drug addicts don't value their time too highly, and wouldn't be put out by having to talk to someone every day to get their fix. Meanwhile it's a great place to push interventions. It's obvious fundamentalist prohibition is straight up not working.

If you gave it away for free, how would the OD rate not go up? You will still have the street market if you are at least somewhat restrictive however; that is unless we start enforcing laws against dealers again, but that isn’t going to happen without any leverage over users. At best what we can achieve is what Portugal achieved, which is mixed success that no one is really happy about.

How would the OD rate go up? I'd say that most overdoses are caused by people not knowing exactly what they're taking. The pathological case being someone buying pills they expect to contain no opioids, but yet still ending up being cut with fentanyl because it's cheap to smuggle and provides a stand-in psychoactive effect.

Also I don't see why there needs to be leverage over users to enforce laws against dealers. Does buying food need to be illegal in order for the government to regulate food safety? Of course those laws for dealers need to be sensible like only selling pills made with Good Manufacturing Practices and other quality control, otherwise we're right back to draconian prohibition.

Re: 7 out of every 10 Fentanyl pills seized by DEA contain a lethal dose

#78

Post by rayiner »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #76
rayiner wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument was that the drug problem was caused by prohibition, but obviously that wasn’t the whole of it. The argument that the public should pay a bunch of money to deal with drug problems is a different argument.

> argument was that the drug problem was caused by prohibition To be fair, Oregon never reached the point of legal sales channels for drugs. Drug users still had to purchase drugs from a dealer. Their supply chains were the same as in other states. Actual legalisation would establish a legal purchase channel. That would come with quality controls, et cetera .

Fair point. We should have Purdue make fentanyl.

Re: 7 out of every 10 Fentanyl pills seized by DEA contain a lethal dose

#79

Post by seanmcdirmid »

mindslight wrote: post #77
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you gave it away for free, how would the OD rate not go up? You will still have the street market if you are at least somewhat restrictive however; that is unless we start enforcing laws against dealers again, but that isn’t going to happen without any leverage over users. At best what we can achieve is what Portugal achieved, which is mixed success that no one is really happy about.

How would the OD rate go up? I'd say that most overdoses are caused by people not knowing exactly what they're taking. The pathological case being someone buying pills they expect to contain no opioids , but yet still ending up being cut with fentanyl because it's cheap to smuggle and provides a stand-in psychoactive effect. Also I don't see why there needs to be leverage over users to enforce laws against dealers. D…

There is dumb high school kid OD, the drug they think is safe is actually laced with too much fent. I assume you aren’t going to let these kids buy from legit sources anyways, so I’m not sure how they are avoiding buying from the homeless encampment next to their city bus stop (something that actually happened here in Seattle). Then there are people that don’t care, and do as much drugs as they can get their hands on, the people who are in crisis all the time.

If you can’t go after the users, you have to find some other way to get to the dealers. Portugal has that problem, since they can’t go after use, the police aren’t finding an effective way to go after dealers either.

Re: 7 out of every 10 Fentanyl pills seized by DEA contain a lethal dose

#80

Post by seanmcdirmid »

bsder wrote: post #74
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you gave it away for free, how would the OD rate not go up? You will still have the street market if you are at least somewhat restrictive however; that is unless we start enforcing laws against dealers again, but that isn’t going to happen without any leverage over users. At best what we can achieve is what Portugal achieved, which is mixed success that no one is really happy about.

There's never money for treatment, but there's always money for police and prison. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-dru... > After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by the state to nonp…

There is always money for treatment, actually, just never enough money for an ever expanding problem. And it’s all locally allocated, while the problem is national, can Portland or even Oregon solve a problem that spans several states? Vancouver nearby (BC not WA) has similar problems, better funding (and more federal help as well), but it is still far from enough.
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