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Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#231

Post by avbanks »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #126
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

Nah. You need legalization and regulation so that people can buy known doses of known substances. Decriminalization is nice for keeping users out of jail, but as long as manufacture and sales are illegal the supply is still going to be fucked.

Doesn't regulation mean that something will be illegal? Are you just going let chemist create and sell and super addictive or dangerous drugs?

Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#232

Post by Nihilartikel »

cptskippy wrote: post #125
Zak wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prescription drug sales reps market to doctors , attempting to convince them to prescribe certain drugs more frequently. Who pays for the drugs is largely irrelevant to that interaction, but I wouldn't be shocked to learn it's illegal in the UK.

> Prescription drug sales reps market to doctors, attempting to convince them to prescribe certain drugs more frequently. I dated a girl who went into pharmaceutical sales. They're basically bribed. They get kickbacks in some form or fashion. They get invited to speak a medical conferences by drug company reps, those conferences just happen to be at luxury retreats.

Back in the early 2000's I drove for a proto-doordash (no apps, cell phones, or GPS, just two way radios and a local map book) food delivery service. The best jobs were always the pharma reps buying $500 of lunch for a 5 person doctors office. Could walk away with $100 in tips from a lunch shift.

Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#233

Post by HybridCurve »

vikasnair wrote: post #202

It’s important to note a significant percentage of these deaths are cases in which other substances with trace amounts of fentanyl are consumed unbeknownst to the user. Dealers often use the same scales, which is one risk factor for cross-contaminating supply. My mother is a physician, she just last night told me about a case she saw over the weekend in which a young 20-something nearly OD’d on fentanyl from taking e…

This is the core problem, I rarely ever hear of someone using fentanyl by itself. Fentanyl is incredibly potent which maximizes profit/volume for traffickers. This creates a tremendous financial incentive for them to adopt since it provides a competitive advantage. If it's easier and cheaper to obtain fentanyl than Alprazolam (xanax), then illicit manufacturers will produce a counterfeit using fentanyl as the active ingredient. Fentanyl overdoses are also frequently caused by improper mixing techniques (powder to powder) and the non-uniform distribution will result in someone getting a hot dose. In that case, testing might not even help.

Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#234

Post by vorpalhex »

pksebben wrote: post #218
vorpalhex wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just do alcohol then? It's much stronger than pot, legal and cheap.

it's a lot worse for your health, for one. also, they don't have remotely similar effects

The argument though was that fent/meth users would stop using fent/meth if pot was legal.

If that argument is true, wouldn't fent/meth users just use alcohol since that is legal?

Alcohol is much better for you than meth and both are cns depressents.

Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#236

Post by Tiktaalik »

vikasnair wrote: post #202

It’s important to note a significant percentage of these deaths are cases in which other substances with trace amounts of fentanyl are consumed unbeknownst to the user. Dealers often use the same scales, which is one risk factor for cross-contaminating supply. My mother is a physician, she just last night told me about a case she saw over the weekend in which a young 20-something nearly OD’d on fentanyl from taking e…

This is the core issue. It’s not a fentanyl crisis, it’s a toxic drug crisis.

The drugs are often completely different from what they’re sold as, with all sorts of toxic things added.

People do a dose that is sensible based on their assumption of what the drug is, but the drug is something else, so their dose is completely incorrect and they overdose and die.

No drug user at this point should expect their drugs are what they’re advertised as.

Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#237

Post by Tiktaalik »

jack_pp wrote: post #216
rhaway84773 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I don’t have the money to pay rent, what should I do? Should I commit suicide? And the extremely high rents means in the US you don’t even need to be jobless to not be able to afford rent. The lowest 10-20% of paying jobs may not pay enough money for a person to live in the area the job exists. Homelessness in the US is a massive problem. But the homeless are not the cause of homelessness. They’re the victims.…

Not everyone needs to concentrate in a couple big cities. You can't afford to rent in the city go somewhere else that's cheaper. There is an abundance of land in the US not being utilized. Why must people be subjected to witnessing others misery and self-destruction? If you care so little about their public camping would you also let someone camp in your yard? You seem to have no sympathy for shop owners that get rob…

Even if rent is arguably cheaper outside of the big cities, the costs of living for the poor are more expensive as transportation costs increase, and economic opportunity plunges.

Of course it makes sense for economically precarious people to move to the city. We should expect and applaud them for making this decision. It’s where all the jobs are.

Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#238

Post by Tiktaalik »

Zak wrote: post #75
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already tried that, it doesn't work. Hint: tobacco and alcohol deaths didn't decrease when tobacco and alcohol sales were decriminalized. What does work is making the cost of drugs prohibitive by placing great transaction costs on the drug trade. (See: taxes and tobacco.)

Death and disability from methanol-contaminated alcohol decreased when alcohol sales were re-legalized in the US. This is partly due to the government mandating the inclusion of methanol in denatured alcohol for industrial purposes. Many of the current overdose deaths are not the result of people knowingly taking an acutely risky dose; they are instead the result of black market drugs having unpredictable composition…

Yep! We already have gone through the creation of a safe supply of drugs and the creation of safe consumption sites. With alcohol they’re called “bars.”

In doing so we’ve saved many lives.

Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#239

Post by MockObject »

spicyusername wrote: post #2

And yet marijuana is still illegal in my state. The impact of legislation like Citizens United and the outsized influence of large institutions on American politics is really unfortunate.

How is Citizens United a factor here? If it were, it would be the cannabis companies using their earnings to successfully legalize it in other states, and on the federal level. Perhaps we need more lobbying money happening.

Re: Washington faltered as fentanyl gripped America

#240

Post by sonjat »

vikasnair wrote: post #202

It’s important to note a significant percentage of these deaths are cases in which other substances with trace amounts of fentanyl are consumed unbeknownst to the user. Dealers often use the same scales, which is one risk factor for cross-contaminating supply. My mother is a physician, she just last night told me about a case she saw over the weekend in which a young 20-something nearly OD’d on fentanyl from taking e…

Really we need to start changing terminology. A great deal of these deaths are not overdoses in the sense that people took too much of a drug but poisonings in that people took something they did not intend to take. It might seem like a minor detail, but if helps drive home the point that even users who do not take opiods are at risk, it is worth doing.
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