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The rise of fentanyl trafficking is largely a result of prohibition. Imagine you are a drug smuggler. Now would you rather have truck load worth $100k or a brie
by jdc 7y ago
The rise of fentanyl trafficking is largely a result of prohibition. Imagine you are a drug smuggler. Now would you rather have truck load worth $100k or a briefcase worth $100k?
- jariel 7y agoLegal drugs would create vast incentives for R&D and fentanyl would have likely happened sooner - but it doesn't matter. Fenatnyl largely ends the debate on 'full legalisation' - there are just far too many things that are 'fun close to death' beyond even that. Everything will have to be taken case by case: micro dots I can see happening. Maybe coca leaves - unprocessed. But beyond that it's just too hard to regulate reasonably - it's one of those interesting and undeniable cases of community vs. individual freedoms: just as there are super conscientious folks who can 'handle there stuff' there are far, far too many who cannot. I live in a mixed neighbourhood across fro a social clinic and this experience has been enlightening. To me, the freedom opportunity is simply not worth the extensive social cost. Decriminalise, change how we think about it surely, but there's no avoiding the general 'war' on controlled substances at scale. Just look at Juul and vaping, it's absolutely rocked in popularity, spreading through youth culture to the point where it's really a fundamental behaviour, and therefore concern. And that's just nicotine. I'd be nice to find a way to sort out the reasonable folks from the rest ... but I'm not sure this is going to happen in our lifetimes.
- remotecool 7y agoIt works so well with guns.
- XorNot 7y agoDrugs are a thing which destroys the user. Guns destroy everybody else.
- Finch2192 7y agoWell, to be fair, and we're on course to veer right off topic -- a large majority of gun deaths are suicides.
- baby 7y agoNot sure why you’re being downvoted.
- tasty_freeze 7y agoFollowing up Finch's reply, which said: "a large majority of gun deaths are suicides." Specifically, in the US, 60% are suicides. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-the-da...
- empath75 7y agoAs a gun owner you’re far more likely to commit suicide than murder.
- XorNot 7y agoNobody accidentally discharges drugs into the adjoining house.
- Wohlf 7y agoYou must not have experience with drugs abusers then, they destroy families and communities.
- dpix 7y agoBut guns in America are not regulated. In most countries guns are legal just heavily regulated. A completely black market for guns would lead to things that could blow up in your hand or explode at any time, the same as unregulated drugs
- DuskStar 7y agoGuns are pretty heavily regulated in the US though? Many kinds you can't buy at all, and those you can require background checks. (A lot of people seem to think that there are fewer restrictions on guns than there actually are, and that's before you bring individual states into the equation) It's just everywhere else is even more outrageously restricted, which makes the US look liberal in comparison... But to call guns unregulated in the states is to say that cars (among many other things) are completely unregulated too.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- refurb 7y agoGuns are most certainly regulated in the US and quite heavily. You can’t make a gun to sell without an ATF license. All guns must have serials numbers and customers pre-screened. And that’s just federal law. Many states have even greater regulations.
- rkoten 7y agoDoesn't the same logic apply if you're a legitimate provider?
- kerridge0 7y agoNo because of the increased risk of death means you might get a worse reputation if people OD.
- duncan-donuts 7y agoProbably? Hospitals use fentanyl all the time and I’d imagine they have no problem with dosing. It’s probably pretty great to have enough pain killers on hand for an entire hospital and not needing 100x the space (or whatever the scale is)
- Scoundreller 7y agoFunny how you say that. Fentanyl solution for injection that hospitals get is a lot less potent than the hydromorphone solutions for injection that they can stock. (50mcg/mL vs 10, 20, 50 or 100mg/mL). As for the actual dosing... fentanyl is a lot more forgiving than morphine or hydromorphone, as measured by therapeutic index.
- refurb 7y agoThis is very true! Fentanyl tends to cause less respiratory depression at higher doses than opioids like morphine. The ODs are mainly because people don’t know what they are buying.
- DuskStar 7y agoSort of, but the calculus changes. In a regulated market, costs are likely to be dominated by the cost of the product, cost of service, regulations and taxes - shipping a truckload of product legally isn't going to come close to that. But with illegal drugs, cost of transport is one of the biggest contributors to cost, and so taking steps to minimize that is worthwhile. For instance, cocaine costs ~2k/kg in backcountry Columbia, but ~20k/kg in US cities [0] (at least at the time the article was researched). And when your transport costs dominate that much, almost every way to reduce volume and weight is justified. 0: https://www.businessinsider.com/from-colombia-to-new-york-city-the-economics-of-cocaine-2015-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/from-colombia-to-new-york-ci...