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The Opioid Detection Challenge
- badloginagain 8y agoI can't see something like this actually addressing the root causes for the opioid epidemic. In fact, I can only see this further criminalizing addicts- a world where police can 'unobtrusively' detect opioids on a suspect further marginalizes/stigmatizes these people.
- jtmcmc 8y agonailed it. this is the most backwards thing ever.
- mirimir 8y agoBut damn, consider the potential lulz. If someone intentionally contaminated the postal system with fentanyl, an appreciable percentage of all packages might show up positive. I vaguely recall that this accidentally happened during the 2003 ricin attacks. One of the letters got ripped in machinery.
- fwip 8y agoFentanyl is very dangerous to handle. It wouldn't be "lulz" at all.
- mirimir 8y agoWell, if their plan is detecting opioid residues on the outsides of packages, they must be aiming for at least nanogram detection limits. Because they're counting on sloppiness in weighing and packaging. And those levels are far below toxicity thresholds, even for fentanyl.
- DanBC 8y agoHere's a fatal dose of fentanyl. It's 2mg. https://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/noras-blog/2018/05/true-deadly-scope-americas-fentanyl-problem https://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/noras-blog/2018/05/true...
- LifeLiverTransp 8y agoThats a "weaponizeable chemical" kind of scary. I mean, imagine if a dealer dumped something of this into the airduct of a public building or train station to get more customers...
- jtmcmc 8y agoThat wouldn't get more customers it would just cause people to get high, sick, or dead. It's not like they would put a big calling card "like how you feel call this number"
- duado 8y agoOne of the root causes is supply. The book Dreamland is a pretty thorough explainer.
- lucisferre 8y agoBut I would assume the receiver is the most likely to be caught by systems like this and not the sender.
- flukus 8y agoIt might have been an initial cause, but treating it as a root cause now would exacerbate the problem. Every supply restriction makes it a more lucrative business to be in.
- ummonk 8y agoI don't think the goal here is to catch opioid users and criminalize them, but rather to try to cut off the illegal supply of opioids.
- gjs278 8y agothis is to jail users not jail suppliers
- Sophistifunk 8y agoProhibition is slavery, do not help these assholes.
- mythrwy 8y agoProhibition might not be the best idea, but I can't see it being remotely close to slavery.
- Latteland 8y agoBefore I was aware of the opioid epidemic, I thought decriminalization was the right thing, because it would remove the criminal element (or reduce it), stop criminalizing users. I knew there were some drugs that were deadly. But opioids and now fentanyl are so addictive, so destructive that I think I only favor decriminalizing of less dangerous drugs. Also the drugs are so powerful, it's yet another weapon of mass destruction - kick some into the air system of a concert or airplanes, you could kill a huge number of people. I'd love to hear a rationale why decriminalization would make things better in this world of opioids and fentanyl.
- codyb 8y agoI think what you’d want to do in a case like this is make legal the not WMD strength stuff at affordable prices and constant purity. The idea being that the heroin market could grow and reduce the demand for the fentanyls and carfentanyls. Hopefully the addicted would want the safer stuff, especially if it was at similar prices or cheaper. Then you tax it, and use the money raised for public awareness and education to drive down the rate over time and offer out reach programs, counseling, and rehab services to the people buying the stuff. That seems like the sanest and most humane way to tackle both having these extremely potent and dangerous substances flying through our mail system while limiting damage over time, and helping as many as possible for whom they’ve already become addicted or are on that path.
- Latteland 8y agoYou lay out a reasonable position where it might work. I salute you. That sounds reasonable and I could see that it might work. If it was cheap enough, anyone could get a prescription, treatment was also available, then it would drive down the price so much that there would be little incentive to use the illegal stuff. Sell controllable amounts, that is better than random death, plus random overdose.
- sudosteph 8y agoWow, they must be really desperate to think this was a good idea. Maybe it's their last ditch effort to say "we tried everything" before petitioning for a change of laws to open up more packages for inspection. It's kinda silly, the only sample data is for positive detection of opiods from xray images. They don't give you any examples of things that are false positives or give you dimensions of the packages in the images or details on what was actually in those xray images (like weight or something could be good info?). So yeah, maybe you could set up some machine learning thing to be like "ooh it looks like powder!" but they don't give you info about how long it even takes to take those xray images or the size of those machines or how frequently they get used currently, all of which are appear to be factors in their selection process.
- Nasrudith 8y agoI thought the true purpose of it was the same as drug sniffing dogs - that they don't want detection but search justification for fishing expeditions.
- hluska 8y agoI hope this isn’t a stupid question, but what about dogs? Are dogs fast enough for airports but too slow for mail?
- sudosteph 8y agoOne of their reference links (https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/05/25/written-testimony-cbp-senate-homeland-security-and-governmental-affairs-permanent https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/05/25/written-testimony-cbp-se...) does mention that they are piloting a study to see if dogs can detect fetanyl, but I'm guessing it's either not going great, or they just want to explore some other options.
- Nasrudith 8y agoAside from signal om demand training issues airtight sealing defeats them - let alone ones which don't have a discernible scent.
- b1r6 8y agoThis is a crucial point. Vendors these days (at least the good ones) properly package their goods with vapor barrier vacuum-sealed bags. Even better, some use Mylar bags which provide a nice metallic aluminum barrier. You could hold a Mylar bag of weed up to a well-trained drug dog, and it would not trigger. (Unless commanded to falsely by the officer, of course :)
- gorkish 8y agoWhen much of the problem are people getting opioids directly from the pharmacy what good is detecting it in the mail?
- refurb 8y agoMost of the opioids are from illicit sources. Or at least the opioids that are killing people. It’s a real challenge. 1 gram of fentanyl, which would be easy to disguise in the mail, is equal to 10,000 doses. Carfentanyl is 50-100x more potent.
- meowface 8y agoThis seems to specifically be aimed at detecting fentanyl and its derivatives, which doctors rarely prescribe.
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- mythrwy 8y agoHow are people going to test their ideas? Will they be passing out samples to test on?
- Latteland 8y agoI was thinking that too. I looked at the rules, nothing there.
- zackkatz 8y agoDo I win the prize if I submit “Build the wall”?
- icinnamon 8y agoIf you’re interested in tackling challenges like these, we do this at a much larger scale at Synapse Technology (gun/knife detection in X-ray images at airports, schools, courthouses, etc). Feel free to reach out.
- b1r6 8y agoI will not work on this, because I see it as enabling the violation of our constitution. You cannot solve a demand-side problem by attempting to reduce the supply. Market economies simply raise the price, attracting increasingly-devious suppliers.
- otabdeveloper1 8y ago> You cannot solve a demand-side problem by attempting to reduce the supply. Of course you can. Works perfectly well for rape and murder, for example. (As well as for traffic violations, for that matter.)
- b1r6 8y agoI guess for me that is not clear-cut. Rapes still occur pretty often, and many/most sadly aren't reported. (Legalizing prostitution could reduce them?) For every traffic violation that is caught, a high multiple more fly by. (Speeding, for example). The demand for murder is so low that it's hard for me to conceptualize as a market.