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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 sa

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 culpability only fall on one party?

DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
Fentanyl analogues are not a problem in China, hence the relative slowness in cracking down on them. History suggests they will be. China happily exported and exports Ketamine, and are now dealing with a massive problem of heavy Ketamine addicts. It’s gotten so bad that they’ve lobbied internationally to sanction ketamine, which ran into a brick wall for good reasons.1 1 Ketamine is the only general anesthetic that doesn’t require loads of training and respiratory support to use, and as such is on the WHO lost of essentials.
- atomical 8y ago
  Ketamine has potential as a novel treatment for depression. It's not as addictive as some people would suggest. I have a prescription and it makes me sweat profusely and puke. Hardly enjoyable and I have no interest in dissociation because I want to live in the present. Making Ketamine harder for patients to access is going to destroy a lot of lives. People with depression like myself are already being taken advantage of by Ketamine infusion clinics that charge exorbitant rates. These doctors, often not psychiatrists, could prescribe a lozenge for their patients to take at home if they were serious about helping depressed patients and not lining their pockets.
  - DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
    Making Ketamine harder for patients to access is going to destroy a lot of lives. Even putting aside its use as a treatment for depression, restricting Ketamine was deemed unacceptable by the WHO, so don’t worry. It’s really really the only thing going if you need to intervene surgically and don’t have an OR.
Koshkin 8y ago
Well, who was to blame for the 19th century Opium Wars? The Chinese?
- nimrod0 8y ago
  The Opium Wars began when the Chinese confiscated the British drug contraband (but property to the British) and lit a bonfire with them, as the opium trade was illegal. There is no comparison.
- phlakaton 8y ago
  That was certainly how the British saw it: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lord_Palmerston_to_the_Minister_of_the_Emperor_of_China https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lord_Palmerston_to_the_Minist...
- smallnamespace 8y ago
  I think there is an important difference between trade being forced open at gunpoint, vs. trade deals peacefully negotiated. What's more interesting though is the inherent impedance mismatch between money and goods (which are highly mobile and flow everywhere) and people and laws (which are much less so). The crux of the problem is Americans are negatively affected by things that China sells. But what is the remedy? Should China's government take American citizens' interests directly into account when making its laws? Is that a reciprocal obligation? How far does it extend? How is it different from the current scenario, where presumably the US State Department identifies the harm, brings it up with China, and negotiates a change to Chinese laws? Should there be a bureaucratic mechanism with quicker feedback? Would that lead to an inevitable loss of effective sovereignty for nations?
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  I'm not sure what you're angling at with this weird historical whataboutism. Are you saying that it's acceptable for Chinese companies and gangs to manufacture opiates and ship them off to the USA because Britain and the USA went to war with China 150 years ago to enforce the opium trade?
  - 8y ago
Fricken 8y ago
Any supplier thinking long-term I'm sure will recognize the economic downside of killing off their clientele. It's in their interests to self-regulate and enforce stricter quality control standards to mitigate fatal overdoses.
- leetcrew 8y ago
  > Any supplier thinking long-term I'm sure will recognize the economic downside of killing off their clientele maybe, maybe not. often when someone overdoses, the dealer has customers lined up around the block the next day. addicts don't know whether that particular stuff was cut with fent or just stronger than usual, and they don't particularly care. even if enough people were dying that it made a significant dent in sales, i doubt it would change anything for the suppliers. selling fentanyl as heroin is massively more profitable than just selling heroin, and there's no way to do it safely. low doses of heroin are in the tens of milligrams, while fentanyl can have a potent effect at doses less than one milligram. this makes it really hard to achieve a homogenous mixture; there's basically always going to be some potentially lethal hotspots.
- bigiain 8y ago
  The tobacco industry and car industry are both counter examples to this. There are real use cases for fentanyl (there's a report here locally of ambulance crews misappropriating fentanyl from the pain medication supplies.) I know there's media reports of "an opioid epidemic", but I'm suspicious about how much that's "real" and how much of it is "war on drugs" reporting pushed by law enforcement PR for the purposes of propping up the prison-industrial complex... 30,000 deaths per year in the US seems to be considered "acceptable" in the face of the benefits of 200-ish million people owning/driving cars. I wonder what the ratio of "people benefiting" vs "people dying" from opiates and fentanyl in particular is?
madengr 8y ago
“Fentanyl analogues are not a problem in China, hence the relative slowness in cracking down on them.” Probably because it’s the death sentence.
dredmorbius 8y ago
#GreshamsLaw
swerveonem 8y ago
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?

DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago

Fentanyl analogues are not a problem in China, hence the relative slowness in cracking down on them. History suggests they will be. China happily exported and exports Ketamine, and are now dealing with a massive problem of heavy Ketamine addicts. It’s gotten so bad that they’ve lobbied internationally to sanction ketamine, which ran into a brick wall for good reasons.1 1 Ketamine is the only general anesthetic that doesn’t require loads of training and respiratory support to use, and as such is on the WHO lost of essentials.

atomical 8y ago
Ketamine has potential as a novel treatment for depression. It's not as addictive as some people would suggest. I have a prescription and it makes me sweat profusely and puke. Hardly enjoyable and I have no interest in dissociation because I want to live in the present. Making Ketamine harder for patients to access is going to destroy a lot of lives. People with depression like myself are already being taken advantage of by Ketamine infusion clinics that charge exorbitant rates. These doctors, often not psychiatrists, could prescribe a lozenge for their patients to take at home if they were serious about helping depressed patients and not lining their pockets.
- DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
  Making Ketamine harder for patients to access is going to destroy a lot of lives. Even putting aside its use as a treatment for depression, restricting Ketamine was deemed unacceptable by the WHO, so don’t worry. It’s really really the only thing going if you need to intervene surgically and don’t have an OR.

Koshkin 8y ago

Well, who was to blame for the 19th century Opium Wars? The Chinese?

nimrod0 8y ago
The Opium Wars began when the Chinese confiscated the British drug contraband (but property to the British) and lit a bonfire with them, as the opium trade was illegal. There is no comparison.
phlakaton 8y ago
That was certainly how the British saw it: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lord_Palmerston_to_the_Minister_of_the_Emperor_of_China https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lord_Palmerston_to_the_Minist...
smallnamespace 8y ago
I think there is an important difference between trade being forced open at gunpoint, vs. trade deals peacefully negotiated. What's more interesting though is the inherent impedance mismatch between money and goods (which are highly mobile and flow everywhere) and people and laws (which are much less so). The crux of the problem is Americans are negatively affected by things that China sells. But what is the remedy? Should China's government take American citizens' interests directly into account when making its laws? Is that a reciprocal obligation? How far does it extend? How is it different from the current scenario, where presumably the US State Department identifies the harm, brings it up with China, and negotiates a change to Chinese laws? Should there be a bureaucratic mechanism with quicker feedback? Would that lead to an inevitable loss of effective sovereignty for nations?
toomanybeersies 8y ago
I'm not sure what you're angling at with this weird historical whataboutism. Are you saying that it's acceptable for Chinese companies and gangs to manufacture opiates and ship them off to the USA because Britain and the USA went to war with China 150 years ago to enforce the opium trade?
- 8y ago

Fricken 8y ago

Any supplier thinking long-term I'm sure will recognize the economic downside of killing off their clientele. It's in their interests to self-regulate and enforce stricter quality control standards to mitigate fatal overdoses.

leetcrew 8y ago
> Any supplier thinking long-term I'm sure will recognize the economic downside of killing off their clientele maybe, maybe not. often when someone overdoses, the dealer has customers lined up around the block the next day. addicts don't know whether that particular stuff was cut with fent or just stronger than usual, and they don't particularly care. even if enough people were dying that it made a significant dent in sales, i doubt it would change anything for the suppliers. selling fentanyl as heroin is massively more profitable than just selling heroin, and there's no way to do it safely. low doses of heroin are in the tens of milligrams, while fentanyl can have a potent effect at doses less than one milligram. this makes it really hard to achieve a homogenous mixture; there's basically always going to be some potentially lethal hotspots.
bigiain 8y ago
The tobacco industry and car industry are both counter examples to this. There are real use cases for fentanyl (there's a report here locally of ambulance crews misappropriating fentanyl from the pain medication supplies.) I know there's media reports of "an opioid epidemic", but I'm suspicious about how much that's "real" and how much of it is "war on drugs" reporting pushed by law enforcement PR for the purposes of propping up the prison-industrial complex... 30,000 deaths per year in the US seems to be considered "acceptable" in the face of the benefits of 200-ish million people owning/driving cars. I wonder what the ratio of "people benefiting" vs "people dying" from opiates and fentanyl in particular is?

madengr 8y ago

“Fentanyl analogues are not a problem in China, hence the relative slowness in cracking down on them.” Probably because it’s the death sentence.

dredmorbius 8y ago

#GreshamsLaw

swerveonem 8y ago

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?