Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins • Hacker News Board

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#161

Post by JshWright » Thu, May 24, 2018, 11:52 AM UTC

girvo wrote: post #150

JshWright wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using it for (other people's) pain management, I don't really care about how "nice" the high is (and I don't have any experience with it personally). The main reason I like fentanyl is that it peaks much earlier than morphine. The most common reason I administer opioids is due to a musculoskeletal injury of some sort. Often those patients would experience a significant amount of pain while being moved and loaded into…

I wasn’t suggesting you were :) was more discussing a tangential point. In Australia, if they are conscious they typically get them to use methoxyflurane (the “green whistle”). It’s quite nice, and very effective!

Yeah, but it also does very unkind things to your liver and kidneys... It was never used in EMS in the United States, and surgical anesthesiologists stopped using back in the 90's.

Some parts of the US do use nitrous oxide in an EMS setting though (technically it's in my protocols, but I don't know of any agencies around here that carry it).

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#162

Post by beat » Thu, May 24, 2018, 1:43 PM UTC

ShabbosGoy wrote: post #125

girvo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that interesting. Heroin and morphine both have a much nicer high than Fentanyl, taking IV recreationally — at least they did for me, back when I was an addict

I took Hydrocodone recreationally once, as I had some leftovers from my ribcage injury. Aside from enhanced dreams and occasional hypnogogia, I still didn’t really see the appeal. You can achieve the same euphoria with THC (IIRC, OPRM1 gene expression is altered upon consumption of THC). OPRM1 is an interesting gene, though. Habitual use of morphine (and other substances like alcohol, OPRM1 expression is implicated i…

Hydrocodone is deliberately weak, to the point where it's hard to get high from it. It's like comparing the pleasant burn of a sip of whiskey to getting hammered drunk. It's not really representative of a true opiate high experience.

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#163

Post by 628C6l0 » Thu, May 24, 2018, 1:50 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #124

205guy wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There certainly are a lot of stories about China's perceived misdeeds in Bloomberg, and a lot of Bloomberg articles are reposted on HN lately. Enough to make me go hmmmm.

The scrutiny increases in a manner beyond direct proportion to the size of your influence on the world, economically and militarily. The US is subject to endless bashing, scrutiny, paranoia, unfair reporting, you name it. If the US does a thing, it's evil or wrong policy; if Germany, Denmark, Canada or France do the same thing, it's perfectly acceptable (see: immigration or corporate tax rates or trade barriers). Tha…

> The US is subject to endless bashing, scrutiny, paranoia, unfair reporting, you name it. If the US does a thing, it's evil or wrong policy

I'm Chinese, and I just want to say in my experience this isn't true of Chinese media coverage of the US.

For the most part the US (and other western countries) are covered in positive, admiring terms. "This is how American educate their kids. We should emulate that" "How to make XXX-food the American way" "i was shocked how clean US cities are as" "ten most beautiful US destinations" etc etc.

American media and politicians often use the phrase "the Chinese" (also think: "the Russians"; you don't often hear "the British" "the French"). Chuck Schumer says just the other day something to the effect that we must be united in our "fight against the Chinese". It's hard for a Chinese person to read that kind of language without ... feeling a bit disheartened inside. Say what you will about Chinese media, when there is anything critical about the US the target is never "the Americans".

When you use language like "the Xs" you are speaking in tribal-war terms. Good for selling newspapers maybe. But we all know what tribalism can easily snowball into ...

It was frankly a surprise for me to find out just how much hostility there exists on the other side. I'm not necessarily talking about hostility in the sense of outright lying/fabrication in stories about China. A newspaper can choose to print all the true negative stories about blacks that come its way, and skip half of the true negative stories about whites, and still be able to claim they haven't printed a single false article about blacks. Doesn't mean it's not biased against black people. The hostility often resides at the level of what's implied rather than what's said.

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#164

Post by beat » Thu, May 24, 2018, 1:53 PM UTC

e40 wrote: post #101

beat wrote: post #83

Not to comment on the politics, but... I had fentanyl during a medical procedure a while back, and I can totally see why it's so addictive. It was wonderful . Both pain and anxiety were totally wiped out, and and the comedown was clean and fast, with no ill effects at all. It's the most pleasant drug I've ever experienced. As long as this kind of high exists, people are going to take it.

I had nausea for 2 days following a procedure where I had it. Compared to the same procedure a few years before with Demerol, which I cleared from my system in a few hours, fentanyl was horrid.

I took Demerol a few times as a kid, and heroin once as an adult. As an anesthetic, fentanyl was perfect. I was pain free, felt lucid, and then went right back to normal, no side effects at all.

As a kid, I suffered terrible migraines, and I am old enough to predate migraine medication. My parents also suffer migraines (as do two of my three sisters, yay genetics). Dad had a Demerol prescription for his. They wouldn't give me Demerol, because it was a dangerous addictive drug. Instead, they gave me the safe, effective state of the art circa late 1970s - phenobarbitol. I'd take one, stumble to the couch, wake up 14 hours later, and not remember what happened. I'll never put that poison in my body again! (Later, as an adult, a drug counselor friend told me barbituates were the only drugs he'd seen to be more addictive than tobacco.)

But if my parents needed me to be functional while fighting migraine? I got one of Dad's Demerol instead. Which was awesome, because I still had a migraine, but I didn't care anymore. I could stay awake and follow instructions and converse as needed, from my warm numb blanket of drug.

Working from memory here, I was a lot more "high" on Demerol, and it lasted longer. Fentanyl was much cleaner.

Best of all was the one time I tried heroin, though. Holy crap. Never touching that again. One of humanity's best and most dangerous inventions.

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#165

Post by megaman22 » Thu, May 24, 2018, 2:19 PM UTC

Maarten88 wrote: post #116

megaman22 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stealing someone's wealth away from their children just because they happen to die is one of the most repugnant things I can think of.

Why, philosophically, do you think that children of wealthy parents deserve to inherit that wealth more than anyone else? Is it luck that they are born rich? Are they the reincarnation of their deseased parent? Has God decided so? Would you also support changing the US to a monarchy? Is it different to be born into wealth than born into power?

Because I don't believe in stealing other peoples' things just because they have them. And because I want to make sure that I am free to dispose of my property as I see fit and allow my children to reap the benefits of my labor, and the labor of the generations that have come before them, clawing our way up off of rock farms in northern New England to something better.

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#166

Post by swerveonem » Thu, May 24, 2018, 2:30 PM UTC

smallnamespace wrote: post #58

nacho2sweet wrote: post #49

Fentanyl is a huge problem in Vancouver, where we are usually ground zero for all new opiate trends. Besides killing over 1100 people a year in BC, the money also seeps back into our overheated real-estate market through casino money laundering. It is a crazy cycle. I have no idea why world governments and our own don't say and do more against China. Spineless.

This is the downside of having global economic integration (buy anything from anywhere for the cost of USPS shipping) without political integration. It's the same type of problem as Greek debtors vs. German creditors except in a different context. Fentanyl analogues are not a problem in China, hence the relative slowness in cracking down on them. The supplier is in China, but the buyer is the West. Why does moral cul…

Would you know if fentanyl abuse was a problem in China? With a billion people and all humans being human it's hard to imagine there is not a large sub culture of opiate and fentanyl abuse. Where would we get some quality statistics on the topic?

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#167

Post by lr4444lr » Thu, May 24, 2018, 2:34 PM UTC

nimrod0 wrote: post #118

lr4444lr wrote: post #2

As an American, the irony of comeuppance isn't lost on me, given that we did have some involvement against them in the Opium Wars.

What Americans never learned (or have forgotten) is that drugs affect a whole society, not just the individual.

I think our criminal statutes against drug sales are testament to the opposite.

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#168

Post by nacho2sweet » Thu, May 24, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

cat199 wrote: post #129

mabbo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the money also seeps back into our overheated real-estate market through casino money laundering That's actually not likely how they launder the money. Money laundering regulations in Canada say that large sums of money cashed out an casinos are reported to Fintrac[0], who datamine and analyze that stuff pretty extensively. My knowledge of their capabilities is over a decade old (internship way back), but even then…

> large sums of money cashed out an casinos cashed out? that's not how you do it. it's about a corrupt casino funnelling the money in and pretending it is gambling earnings.. see also: the movie 'casino' (unsurprisingly)

When you return the chips it is called "cashing out". The casino doesn't let you buy in with a duffle bag of $250,000 and cash out for a cheque from the casino for $250,000 in the same transaction. You have to go play a low variance game like Baccarat and play your money through like 200%. Then you cash out $240,000 and get a cheque from the casino that you can easily deposit into a Canadian bank. Gambling winnings in Canada are also tax free.

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#169

Post by yayadarsh » Thu, May 24, 2018, 8:44 PM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #63

cowboysauce wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There doesn't need to be anything sinister about it. Fentanyl is cheap and potent. You can take cheap, low quality heroin, mix it with a little fentanyl and sell it for more profit as high quality heroin. However, if it's not mixed perfectly, you end up with "hotspots" of fentanyl. If someone ends up with a hotspot they can easily overdose. The occasion overdose also attracts more users because it gives the impressio…

The occasion overdose also attracts more users because it gives the impression of potent, high quality heroin. Is that really the case? Do people think "Oh my god, that stuff almost killed me, must be good stuff -- give me some more!"

Yes, and this is commonly documented and reported behavior from many first-person accounts of inner-city drug dealers.

Re: Deadly Chinese Fentanyl Is Creating a New Era of Drug Kingpins

#170

Post by Maarten88 » Fri, May 25, 2018, 10:20 AM UTC

megaman22 wrote: post #165

Maarten88 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, philosophically, do you think that children of wealthy parents deserve to inherit that wealth more than anyone else? Is it luck that they are born rich? Are they the reincarnation of their deseased parent? Has God decided so? Would you also support changing the US to a monarchy? Is it different to be born into wealth than born into power?

Because I don't believe in stealing other peoples' things just because they have them. And because I want to make sure that I am free to dispose of my property as I see fit and allow my children to reap the benefits of my labor, and the labor of the generations that have come before them, clawing our way up off of rock farms in northern New England to something better.

> Because I don't believe in stealing other peoples' things just because they have them.

So that makes you a libertarian who thinks any tax is theft, and estate tax is just as bad as any other tax?

I always wonder how libertarians really think society would work, when nobody cares about anything other than themselves and their own wishes. Countries with weak governments are really not that nice to live in.