You may be surprised to know that opioid use hasn't increased in recent years. SAMHSA has tracked overall opioid use since 2015, and the number of regular users has declined 26% since then:
Most of this is heroin and cocaine. Fentanyl use in 2022 was only about 10% of the total.
The reason drug overdose deaths have skyrocketed is not because opioid use has boomed, or even because fentanyl use is all that high. It's because fentanyl is so damn dangerous. My rough calculation suggests that fentanyl users die at 12 times the rate of ordinary opioid users.
The deaths of useless addicts is, I suppose, tragic. But let’s not cry too much. Useless dreck.
Personally, I feel the same way about people who are addicted to alcohol or tobacco. Just mow 'em down. Save the rest of us on insurance premiums!
Wait, what? Someone in your family what?? Smokes CIGARETTES?!?!? And MY insurance premiums are paying for THEIR lung- and/or heart-disease treatment?!? And those liver problems from alcohol consumption? Why should *I* pay for that?!?
Useless dreck. Toss 'em into shelters until they die, amirite?
Kevin, we had this voice advocating genocide, and again, advocating the final solution.
Can we be rid of him yet?
+1
Psychopath.
I’m certain this is a useless reply, but you wouldn’t say the same about people who die of cancer. Addiction is a disease like any other. Some (me) survive and come out the other end. Others don’t make it (my ex-husband). I would love for you to be able to expand your sense of compassion.
These guys don’t have a disease. They were idiots and now are dead.
https://fox4kc.com/news/kc-area-police-warn-of-rising-fentanyl-deaths-after-toxicology-report-for-3-men/
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City-area police departments are sounding the alarm after toxicology reports showed three men had fentanyl and cocaine in their systems when they were found dead in the Northland last month.
"Most of this is heroin and cocaine.."
Typo? Pretty sure cocaine isn't an opioid.
It isn't.
Drug overdoses, not opioid use.
Fentanyl was engineered, atom by atom, to be the perfect opioid. It's used extensively in anesthesia, which is why there is a by-now predictable rate of anesthesia residents (these are MDs, just to be clear) who die of fentanyl overdose because it's just ... too ... damn ... good. And as a bonus it's comparatively easy to synthesize, and its potency makes it extremely compact, which means it can be manufactured almost anywhere and just mailed into the US. (Any nutbag Republican who squeals about fentanyl coming across "the border" is ... well, Republicans, whatever.)
Until we get serious about treating substance abuse as a medical problem rather than a law enforcement problem, we ain't gettin' nowhere.
Exactly.
I myself prefer Dilaudid. And after the few times it was administered to me, I believe I have a fairly good idea what people are chasing. It's insidious. Once the change is made to treating instead of jailing, we'll have an entirely different country. If recent history is any guide, it will never happen.
It's not so much that fentanyl is dangerous as that it's dangerous if you don't know what you're getting. Most of the fentanyl overdose deaths result from somebody injecting a substance that they believe is some other drug, typically but not always heroin, but it's contaminated with fentanyl.
The answer is to legalize. If users could get pharmaceutically pure drugs they would know which drug they were taking and how much, and overdose deaths could be expected to drop by a couple of orders of magnitude.
I don't disagree that managing addiction by providing known doses to addicts would help to reduce the personal and social problems caused by addiction. Some other countries in fact do this. Alas, in the US, it would be entirely, ludicrously impossible for political reasons, at least in the near term. And in ANY case, fentanyl should NEVER be part of it, because it is VERY MUCH the case that fentanyl is dangerous. It is LETHALLY dangerous in EXTREMELY small doses. There would be no case, in any circumstance, for it to be part of a managed addiction-control program, full stop.
Irrelevant to the comment you're replying to.
Having MDMA laced with Fentanyl is never going to be good.
Fentanyl is, it is true, lethal in small doses. However, it is effective in much smaller doses. One common safety test for any drug is the ratio between a therapeutic dose and a toxic dose. In extreme cases such as some cancer drugs, there is no margin; a therapeutic dose is a toxic dose. However, for opiate drugs generally, the ratio is fairly large.
Practically speaking, a drug that is effective at one microgram and lethal at ten micrograms is no more dangerous than a drug that is effective at one milligram and lethal at ten milligrams. In both cases there is a ten to one ratio between effective and lethal, even though the one drug is lethal at one-thousandth the dose of the other. Fentanyl does not have a lower effective dose/lethal dose ratio than other common opiates, and so is no more dangerous than other opiates, even though both effective and lethal doses are much smaller than for other opiates.
Fentanyl is plenty safe when administered by a competent anesthesiologist, but not when administered by a normal person. The ratio isn't the only thing that matters, the absolute size of the difference also matters, because normal people don't usually have access to equipment that can accurately measure a difference of nine micrograms. Also, drug dealers adulterating their product aren't usually very careful about dosing. Hence why fentanyl kills so many people.
Proper pharmaceutical preparation will dilute extremely powerful drugs like fentanyl so that a therapeutic dose is a conveniently manageable quantity. If, for instance, what is desired is an injectable dose of one microgram of a drug, It may be prepared in solution/suspension at a concentration of one part per million so that the prescribed dose is one cc of the solution/suspension. Botox, for instance, is lethal in a one microgram dose. The solutions that plastic surgeons inject to fight wrinkles are VERY dilute, and consequently quite safe.
You're correct that illegal drug dealers aren't careful, which is a good reason to legalize.
This isn’t entirely correct. The nature of fentanyl is that a lot of addicts actually do end up chasing fentanyl. It lasts a shorter time, but hits harder (this is my understanding from a great couple of episodes of the podcast Search Engine; my addiction wasn’t to opioids so this is not a personal experience talking).
Like OxyContin… bring it back. Absolve purdu pharma of liability?
Pharmaceutical grade OxyContin produces a much lower ratio of deaths to users than street garbage of unknown potency.
Another problem with fentanyl is that is mixed with other drugs like cocaine to give a better high with less active and more filler. But now you are trusting some criminal to properly weigh and mix chemicals. Bad move.
You're always trusting some criminal for illegal drugs.
Fentanyl is effective at such low doses that mixing it correctly is likely a much harder challenge than other opioids. a deadly does is literally like a few grains of sugar.
Can anyone tell me why it is not used in executions in those states that still believe in state murder? Surely it is better than the recent gassing method. And the police confiscate all they need on a daily basis so there is no supply issue.
It’s disappointing to see so many usually-humane commenters here saying that people who get involved with dangerous drugs are useless and need no thought or sympathy.
But the problem with people is that we are, well, human. People make unwise choices in the nature of being people. Some of us bring on heart disease by a fatty diet. Others practice unsafe sex. Many jaywalk. Some become addicted to tobacco at an early age. Is all illness brought on by unwise choices to be excluded from insurance coverage? Where would the line be drawn?
Then there is the question of how culpability would be determined. Not every case of lung cancer is due to the sufferer's smoking. Who would decide whether a particular illness was the patient's "own fault", and thereby cast the unfortunate out of society's protection?
There is no alternative but to accept the fact that people are imperfect and make unwise choices. For better or worse, in sickness or in health, we are all in this together.