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Fentanyl is fueling a record number of youth drug deaths

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Fentanyl is fueling a record number of youth drug deaths

#31

Post by quickthrowman »

bsder wrote: post #9
phone8675309 wrote: post #3

When do we say "enough" to all of these death and just legalize opiates? Fentanyl's rise is 100% attributable to smuggling in drugs due to the War on Drugs. It allows the smugglers to move the maximum potency with the minimum risk and minimum quantity. Drug smuggling is a business, and as long as opiates remain illegal to posses without a prescription than this incentive will dominate. Legalizing opiates, providing s…

> When do we say "enough" to all of these death and just legalize opiates? That's not enough. You have to legalize everything with restrictions like cigarettes and alcohol. The problem is that fentanyl is so powerful that it contaminates everything . Consequently, you get people who bought drugs completely unrelated to fentanyl still overdosing from it (currently a problem in Austin, for example). You don't want rand…

> Consequently, you get people who bought drugs completely unrelated to fentanyl still overdosing from it (currently a problem in Austin, for example).

> You don't want random kids doing marijuana dying from fentanyl.

Nobody is dying from fentanyl laced marijuana.

However, people are dying due to buying and eating pills that contain fentanyl when they think they’re buying xanax or oxycontin. None of the fentanyl is accidentally in these pills. The manufacturer knows about the fentanyl, but the customer might not be aware.

People have died from doing cocaine that had allegedly unknown fentanyl in it, as this news story details the deaths of three people who claimed to have done cocaine with unknown fentanyl in it: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-05/three-de...

Re: Fentanyl is fueling a record number of youth drug deaths

#32

Post by squarefoot »

bermuda4you wrote: post #5
phone8675309 wrote: post #3

When do we say "enough" to all of these death and just legalize opiates? Fentanyl's rise is 100% attributable to smuggling in drugs due to the War on Drugs. It allows the smugglers to move the maximum potency with the minimum risk and minimum quantity. Drug smuggling is a business, and as long as opiates remain illegal to posses without a prescription than this incentive will dominate. Legalizing opiates, providing s…

Legalization of hard drugs doesn't work long term. If you provide all resources to people to enjoy opiates - they will have no incentive to quit. Why is this utopian view so persistent?

> If you provide all resources to people to enjoy opiates - they will have no incentive to quit.

Many people, including myself, quit smoking normal cigarettes although it was highly addictive, because it was bad for health, not because of legality or cost. Of course opiates are a very different beast, but the point is that if someone wants to get drugs they will succeed, period. Expecting them to disappear just because they are made illegal is 100% fantasy. Legalizing drugs would move their production and sale in the open and more regulated markets, with less risks of them being made by improvised chemists in their basement, plus lower costs and much less involvement by organized crime which once prices drop would move to more lucrative businesses. remember what happened in the US when alcohol was banned: people searching for drinks would still find where to buy them, but it was organized crime that started making profits out of the ban.

Re: Fentanyl is fueling a record number of youth drug deaths

#33

Post by TillE »

cpncrunch wrote: post #22
fallingsquirrel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you provide all resources to people to enjoy alcohol, why would anyone quit? Would you argue we should go back to prohibition?

You can safely have a few drinks (or more) and feel normal the next day and go to work. You can't do that with fentanyl.

Fentanyl only exists because it's cheap and easy to make. Anyone with a choice would always take something like oxycodone, and there are a ton of occasional recreational oxy users in the world.

Re: Fentanyl is fueling a record number of youth drug deaths

#34

Post by mensetmanusman »

com2kid wrote: post #16
bermuda4you wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the "progressive" argument. Let people rot to death, it's the compassionate way.

It is also the libertarian argument: The government shouldn't tell people what to do with their own body. Then again, ideally the government would be hard at working making society nice enough to live in that people don't turn to opiates...

The government is concerned with outsourcing manufacturing to make widgets cost less.

Re: Fentanyl is fueling a record number of youth drug deaths

#35

Post by sharadov »

yodsanklai wrote: post #12
phone8675309 wrote: post #3

When do we say "enough" to all of these death and just legalize opiates? Fentanyl's rise is 100% attributable to smuggling in drugs due to the War on Drugs. It allows the smugglers to move the maximum potency with the minimum risk and minimum quantity. Drug smuggling is a business, and as long as opiates remain illegal to posses without a prescription than this incentive will dominate. Legalizing opiates, providing s…

> Drug smuggling is a business, and as long as opiates remain illegal to posses without a prescription than this incentive will dominate. I don't really have an opinion on opiates legalization, but I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. It could be legal, but smugglers could still sell cheaper drug with higher potency. One may wonder why these people get addicted in the first place. It seems rather specific to the US.

People seeking illegal drugs ( Fentanyl ) stems from the fact that the government went after pill mills and illegal prescriptions, so people started seeking these elsewhere.

I would rather people do Heroin than fentanyl which is 10X worse and a small dose can kill.

The problem is that regular pills from the street like oxycodone are being laced with fentanyl. Someone seeking a cheap high, but with the laced pill can end up on the deathbed.

At this point, I would rather legalize opiates than people killing themselves with these tainted pills.

Re: Fentanyl is fueling a record number of youth drug deaths

#36

Post by vips7L »

cpncrunch wrote: post #22
fallingsquirrel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you provide all resources to people to enjoy alcohol, why would anyone quit? Would you argue we should go back to prohibition?

You can safely have a few drinks (or more) and feel normal the next day and go to work. You can't do that with fentanyl.

No body wants to do fentanyl though. People want to safely do Cocaine or MDMA without dying from fentanyl.

Re: Fentanyl is fueling a record number of youth drug deaths

#37

Post by anigbrowl »

bermuda4you wrote: post #5
phone8675309 wrote: post #3

When do we say "enough" to all of these death and just legalize opiates? Fentanyl's rise is 100% attributable to smuggling in drugs due to the War on Drugs. It allows the smugglers to move the maximum potency with the minimum risk and minimum quantity. Drug smuggling is a business, and as long as opiates remain illegal to posses without a prescription than this incentive will dominate. Legalizing opiates, providing s…

Legalization of hard drugs doesn't work long term. If you provide all resources to people to enjoy opiates - they will have no incentive to quit. Why is this utopian view so persistent?

I prefer reasoning from results rather than handwaving: https://drugpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/dpa-drug-d...

Re: Fentanyl is fueling a record number of youth drug deaths

#38

Post by lotsofpulp »

squarefoot wrote: post #32
bermuda4you wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legalization of hard drugs doesn't work long term. If you provide all resources to people to enjoy opiates - they will have no incentive to quit. Why is this utopian view so persistent?

> If you provide all resources to people to enjoy opiates - they will have no incentive to quit. Many people, including myself, quit smoking normal cigarettes although it was highly addictive, because it was bad for health, not because of legality or cost. Of course opiates are a very different beast, but the point is that if someone wants to get drugs they will succeed, period. Expecting them to disappear just becau…

> Of course opiates are a very different beast, but the point is that if someone wants to get drugs they will succeed, period.

Are you suggesting there should be no controlled chemicals? No pharmacist?

>Expecting them to disappear just because they are made illegal is 100% fantasy.

What if the expectation is for fewer people to use less of them due to higher hurdles?

Re: Fentanyl is fueling a record number of youth drug deaths

#39

Post by jmyeet »

phone8675309 wrote: post #3

When do we say "enough" to all of these death and just legalize opiates? Fentanyl's rise is 100% attributable to smuggling in drugs due to the War on Drugs. It allows the smugglers to move the maximum potency with the minimum risk and minimum quantity. Drug smuggling is a business, and as long as opiates remain illegal to posses without a prescription than this incentive will dominate. Legalizing opiates, providing s…

> It allows the smugglers to move the maximum potency with the minimum risk and minimum quantity.

Mostly true but there's another factor: fentanyl is synthetic. There's no dealing with opium poppy crops, farmers, processing of crops (in places like Mexico and Afghanistan), transportation and as a result it's cheap.

> Legalizing opiates ...

I agree that the legalizing these drugs is better than prohibition but, by itself, is an insufficient solution.

As an aside, the US loves criminalizing things. Building prisons is jobs. Prisoners are slave labor. Felons count for the census but can't vote. Often you'll have private prisons thrown in there too. These are an abimination but still represent only a small minority of prisoners.

The Louisiana State Prison, known colloquially as "Angola", is basically a cotton plantation with slave labor.

People need access to their basic needs like housing, food and water. A lot of drug addiction comes out of homelessness as people self-medicate. A bunch of heroin addicts were originally on an opiate prescription. The American medical system compared to other countries hands out opiates like candy.

People need access to mental health care, have security and have hope and dignity in their lives. All of these things are substantially cheaper than our carceral state but there's no profit in it and nobody wants to live near "homeless" people.

At the core of this is the American belief in the myth of meritocracy because the other side of that coin is that homelessness, drug addiction and other awful circumstances are viewed as deserved or at least a personal moral failure. As such, such people almost deserve those outcomes.

So my point is that legalization just barely scratches the surface.

Re: Fentanyl is fueling a record number of youth drug deaths

#40

Post by beaeglebeachedd »

TillE wrote: post #33
cpncrunch wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can safely have a few drinks (or more) and feel normal the next day and go to work. You can't do that with fentanyl.

Fentanyl only exists because it's cheap and easy to make. Anyone with a choice would always take something like oxycodone, and there are a ton of occasional recreational oxy users in the world.

Tar heroin cheaper to make probably. If it were legalized we wouldn't be optimizing for ease of smuggling which is largely dictated by potency instead of manufacturing costs.
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