12 ms·

Mailed asthma, cancer, erectile drugs are seized the most, despite opioid claims

101 points by blendergeek 4y ago

sbelskie 4y ago
> The FDA said it found 33 packages of opioids and no fentanyl sent by mail in 2022 out of nearly 53,000 drug shipments its inspectors examined at international mail facilities. That’s about 0.06% of examined packages.
yesenadam 4y ago
I was going to correct "siezed", but the original headline seems even worse! : > Asthma, cancer, erectile drugs sent from abroad make up are most confiscations, despite opioid claims
- blendergeek 4y ago
  I fixed siezed -> seized. Thanks!
vorpalhex 4y ago
> The overwhelming majority were uncontrolled prescription drugs that people had ordered, presumably because they can’t afford the prices at home. > The No. 1 item was cheap erectile dysfunction pills, like generic Viagra. I don't think they were ordering viagra online to save a dollar...
- runnerup 4y ago
  More often, to save $150 for a PCP visit. Nobody is ordering black market viagra/cialis because they can't find a doctor who will prescribe it. It's because they can't visit any doctor. Or it's tacked onto another order. For example, Asmanex is $400/mo under my insurance, or I can order another inhaler with the same active ingredient from India for $10. Then I'd likely just put in another $10 of viagra/cialis because why not. Most likely, men are just adding non-FDA approved viagra/cialis to their actual international medication orders "because why not".
  - seanw444 4y ago
    I think parent was referring to it being embarrassing.
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      Viagra is often abused in combination with alcohol or opiods (this may be the more boring codeine type abuse, not meth, etc) since it can allow you to have an erection when your body might not normally allow. Thus if you are at a house party, consuming drugs and intend to get laid, you need to have viagra. Smarter drug dealers include viagra as an addon to "party packages" for an upcharge. For obvious reasons it is desirable to buy in bulk.
  - JumpinJack_Cash 4y ago
    > > It's because they can't visit any doctor It's because people rightfully don't want to go to a doctor when they want to have a good time. UAE and UK have Viagra/Cialis availible OTC. Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece is de-facto OTC (you can go to a pharmacy with an A4 blank piece of paper and 'be your own doctor' by writing in what you need by hand and signing it off still as 'your own doctor' with a fantasy name and a cool autograph). In the Land of the Free you have to go through all sorts of BS if you want to try how does it feel to do it 7 times in a night. Even recreational use is very low risk, not to mention people will do the 7 times/night things a bunch of sessions , cross it from their bucket list and they'd move on with the next item on the list.
    - jaclaz 4y ago
      >Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece is de-facto OTC (you can go to a pharmacy with an A4 blank piece of paper and 'be your own doctor' by writing in what you need by hand and signing it off still as 'your own doctor' with a fantasy name and a cool autograph). Cannot say in the other countries, but in Italy you definitely cannot do that, the pharmacist wants a valid prescription (usually by a known MD, you may have even issues in getting some medicines with a valid prescription signed by a doctor in another city/region). It is the first time that I hear about "invented" prescriptions, though probably making fake ones is not difficult.
blendergeek 4y ago
https://lite.cnn.com/2023/03/07/health/fda-drug-shipments-khn-partner https://lite.cnn.com/2023/03/07/health/fda-drug-shipments-kh...
runnerup 4y ago
This is detailing a report from the FDA about packages they inspected. However, I wonder if there's no overlap with packages inspected by the DEA and/or CBP. The FDA might not see many opiate packages if most of the "hot leads" for which packages likely contain opiates are routed to the DEA for inspection and the FDA never sees them. Similarly for any other Schedule 2/3 drugs. That could be why the FDA mostly sees "asthma" drugs. Though...I do believe that international orders would mirror domestic prevalence and lots of people need asthma medication. I myself have ordered asthma medications from India to save hundreds of dollars per month. Anyways, the article states "The FDA said it found 33 packages of opioids and no fentanyl sent by mail in 2022". This was out of 53,000 packages inspected. However, the CBP reports finding 239 mail parcels with fentanyl at just JFK airport alone in 2018[0]. It's unclear how many packages the DEA has seized but it also sounds like a lot more than 33. 0: https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/crisis-control https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/crisis-control
- muttled 4y ago
  If so, it sounds like there's even less reason for the FDA to be involved if the DEA is already catching the truly illicit stuff. The issue the article takes is that the FDA keeps asking for more and more money to inspect packages for opioids/fentanyl, but is using that money to mostly destroy legitimate medicine. If they had to say what they were actually doing with the money, they might not get it.
  - runnerup 4y ago
    FDA seizing drugs that aren't in the NIDA-5 (cocaine/opiates/amphetamines/etc) will get a lot more contentious when the TikTok generation figures out how to skirt domestic shortages of tirzepatide and semaglutide by getting it from non-FDA approved facilities overseas. However, asthma/cancer/ED/heart medications are probably for now more what the critical voting blocks care about.
    - moremetadata 4y ago
      [flagged]
bediger4000 4y ago
Brian Krebs book, Spam Nation, which dissected 2 leaked Russian "online pharmacy" databases, has the same sort of breakdown for US drug orders. European orders had less health related drugs and more "recreational" drugs like erectile pills. If I recall, the online pharmacies would throw in a handful of Viagra in most orders.
NDizzle 4y ago
Misleading headline. "But the agency’s own data from recent years on its confiscation of packages containing drugs coming through international mail provides scant evidence that a significant number of opioids enters this way." No shit. Who is sending opioids via international mail?! How stupid does CNN think we are? How stupid does CNN think drug smugglers are?! They are being waltzed across our porous southern border.
- vajrabum 4y ago
  Oh, you mean the border where the seizures of fentanyl are at record level and almost of what comes in, comes through the ports of entry in trucks and not some random spot on the border on somebody's back just like you'd expect?
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    There are ten million doses of fentanyl to the kilo. Why would you even need a truck? You could walk it across in your pocket.
  - starkd 4y ago
    What gets confiscated at ports of entry is only a small fraction of the total that is out there. It is very easy to purchase fentanyl from illegal dealer right now and cheap. That is probably the best way to measure how porous the border truly is.
yamtaddle 4y ago
And just like that, all the moral-panic action around fentanyl makes perfect sense.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  Opioid related deaths have increased sharply in the past few years, largely due to the influx of Fentanyl: https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd... If you think this is just a “moral panic” then you’re wrong. It’s a severe problem and it’s only getting worse.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Not just, but the media [EDIT: and political] component absolutely is.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  I talked to this old hippie drug dealer who was talking about all of these things he wouldn’t touch any more because the chance of fentanyl was too high and he’d had friends killed by fentanyl. Exactly the opposite kind of person to be susceptible to that kind of moral panic. Locally they recently did a bust and found enough raw fentanyl for a million lethal doses or enough to get every single person in the extended metro area high. A cheap drug where an amount equal to a few grains of sand can kill is indeed worth the concern.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Sure, but the "public face" of this is stories about fentanyl in kids' candy and cops having seizures after someone tells them they were within ten meters of some fentanyl. That aspect (i.e. the bullshit) is textbook moral-panic stuff.
    - starkd 4y ago
      The hyperbole might be intentional, because it might be the only way to get the word out to the marginalised elements of society that are at greatest risk. I agree is not ideal, because it might lead people to ignore it. But the danger is very real.
awinter-py 4y ago
fascinating there is a private company accrediting foreign pharmacies (pharmacychecker, they guy they quote in the middle) private accreditation feels simultaneously problematic, and something that will fill huge voids left by public licensing systems that have gotten slow or otherwise bad mirrors uber / crypto in that the opportunity is working around something the state wants to own
jeffbee 4y ago
Quick reminder for the younger readers: Customs and Border Patrol has doubled in size in the last 25 years, relative to the size of the population, and in my lifetime has increased the number of agents by 500%. I personally think these losers should get a real job and stop poking around in my mail. The explosion of third-tier fringe law enforcement agencies has not been good for Americans.
- notch898a 4y ago
  Yeah, that and HSI is now like half the size of the FBI. CBP has 60k people and patrols even the interior of the US, they're basically the modern day gestapo complete with suspension of the constitution within 100 miles of the border (which is where most people live).
  - larrik 4y ago
    Especially considering "the border" is all coastlines AND all international airports...
  - kridsdale1 4y ago
    ICE behaves more like a gestapo, with bounties for snitching on your friends, but yeah.
- gruez 4y ago
  >Quick reminder for the younger readers: Customs and Border Patrol has doubled in size in the last 25 years, relative to the size of the population, and in my lifetime has increased the number of agents by 500%. I'm no fan of the CBP but this seems like a flimsy objection. There's no reason to believe why their staffing levels will grow linearly with population. They're tasked with protecting the border, so we'd expect their staffing levels to grow linearly with the amount of border that needs protecting. If there's more stuff coming in (eg. aliexpress shipments from china), or more border crossings (legal or otherwise), we'd expect their numbers to grow faster relative to population.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
gtop3 4y ago
Our prescription drug system needs an overhaul. This isn't a matter of all drugs are illegal to import because of quality control issues. You can import aspirin, if you are so inclined. This is asthma and cancer medication being seized because of an overly tight control of prescription drugs. I understand that some drugs sold overseas are not suitable for human consumption. I understand that some drugs require close supervision. I argue that many medications are quite safe to take without supervision and using doctors as gatekeepers functions primarily to increase the billings generated by sick people. I think the bar for what medications are prescription and which medications are OTC needs to be reevaluated. Perhaps the way in which we market drugs and disclose there risks should be reevaluated simultaneously. Imagine taking away someone's asthma medication and thinking you are making America a safer, better place.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  The international pharmaceutical trade market is already under fire with contamination and fraud issues as it is. 300.000 to 1 million people are estimated to die each year from that per the WHO [1] - that's frankly insane, and it's not just fake penis enlargement pills that people buy on random spam platforms, but the fraudsters even manage to penetrate into the legitimate supply chain of German pharmacies. The solution is obvious: more domestic production, and for the US to get their shit together. You don't need to throw pills for every little cough, the fact that y'all have ads for prescription medicine is completely mind-blowing. Like, I go to the doctor with symptoms, not with a shopping list of stuff shilled in yesterday's cable news. [1] https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/securpharm-101.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/securpharm-101.html
  - 55555 4y ago
    Anytime the topic of the FDA/customs seizing pharma drugs imported by Americans comes up, big pharma and confused citizens conflate the amount of counterfeit branded drugs with actually dangerous drugs. No one is fighting for the right to be able to buy fake Cialis. They are fighting for the right to buy generic Tadalafil manufactured by billion-dollar Indian companies trusted by over a billion people with the proper FDA certifications in India. Those who mislabel their brand should still be prosecuted. That's barely relevant. Yes, we take too many drugs. But we also don't take enough, because we can't afford it, because we're all being squeezed by big pharma. (You're also conflating the Americans who have decent health insurance with those who don't.) And almost no health insurance covers dick pills and no adult should have to explain to a stranger that their dick doesn't work to get their permission to take a super safe drug with a few clearly-described risks. (The truth is, half the online pharma business is literally just dick pills. Half.) I've been interested in this topic for 15+ years. The good news is, despite what this article may lead a casual reader to believe, 99% of the DEA-uncontrolled medications imported are not seized. You can order them safely, and if they are seized, they shipper will probably send them again for free, and you won't have any legal issues.
Pxtl 4y ago
This feels like a "streetlight effect" where they're searching where it's easy to search. Obviously fentanyl is a serious problem in the USA and needs to be tackled, but this kind of indicates that the mail is not the main vector for it getting into the USA, rather comparatively harmless stuff.
- Spivak 4y ago
  > Obviously fentanyl is a serious problem in the USA and needs to be tackled But for some reason it's politically untenable to tackle it in ways that actually help people -- by providing free test strips at corner stores. Being able to easily and reliably test drugs for fentanyl would make using it as an additive worthless. The US really said "abstinence only" with no self-awareness that it doesn't work for sex, drugs, or rock and roll. Any solution that doesn't involve "no drug use" even if it saves lives is is of no interest. Which is surprising because the people I know who snort cocaine like Dysons are well to do white folks.
  - starkd 4y ago
    Those easy test kits have their own false positive/false negative error rates. So, it give a false sense of security. More effective to just raise the alarm that it could be in most illegal drugs, because it most likely is.
    - badwolf 4y ago
      They are also illegal in Texas, as they're considered paraphernalia.
    - Spivak 4y ago
      Raising the alarm isn't actionable though. Okay great you know that there's a not insignificant chance that the bag of bag of molly you just bought is laced with fentanyl, what do you do about it? Because I promise you everyone who does party drugs knows about fentanyl, doesn't stop them though.
steponlego 4y ago
Are people really dying because of an epidemic of asthma drugs and cancer drugs and penis pills being improperly prescribed and mailed? No. The public health issue is centered around opioids. This is like saying, oh gee, never mind dioxin, so many more people die in car wrecks. Yellow journalism probably paid for by big pharma.

101 points by blendergeek 4y ago

> The FDA said it found 33 packages of opioids and no fentanyl sent by mail in 2022 out of nearly 53,000 drug shipments its inspectors examined at international mail facilities. That’s about 0.06% of examined packages.

yesenadam 4y ago

I was going to correct "siezed", but the original headline seems even worse! : > Asthma, cancer, erectile drugs sent from abroad make up are most confiscations, despite opioid claims

blendergeek 4y ago
I fixed siezed -> seized. Thanks!

vorpalhex 4y ago

> The overwhelming majority were uncontrolled prescription drugs that people had ordered, presumably because they can’t afford the prices at home. > The No. 1 item was cheap erectile dysfunction pills, like generic Viagra. I don't think they were ordering viagra online to save a dollar...

runnerup 4y ago
More often, to save $150 for a PCP visit. Nobody is ordering black market viagra/cialis because they can't find a doctor who will prescribe it. It's because they can't visit any doctor. Or it's tacked onto another order. For example, Asmanex is $400/mo under my insurance, or I can order another inhaler with the same active ingredient from India for $10. Then I'd likely just put in another $10 of viagra/cialis because why not. Most likely, men are just adding non-FDA approved viagra/cialis to their actual international medication orders "because why not".
- seanw444 4y ago
  I think parent was referring to it being embarrassing.
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Viagra is often abused in combination with alcohol or opiods (this may be the more boring codeine type abuse, not meth, etc) since it can allow you to have an erection when your body might not normally allow. Thus if you are at a house party, consuming drugs and intend to get laid, you need to have viagra. Smarter drug dealers include viagra as an addon to "party packages" for an upcharge. For obvious reasons it is desirable to buy in bulk.
- JumpinJack_Cash 4y ago
  > > It's because they can't visit any doctor It's because people rightfully don't want to go to a doctor when they want to have a good time. UAE and UK have Viagra/Cialis availible OTC. Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece is de-facto OTC (you can go to a pharmacy with an A4 blank piece of paper and 'be your own doctor' by writing in what you need by hand and signing it off still as 'your own doctor' with a fantasy name and a cool autograph). In the Land of the Free you have to go through all sorts of BS if you want to try how does it feel to do it 7 times in a night. Even recreational use is very low risk, not to mention people will do the 7 times/night things a bunch of sessions , cross it from their bucket list and they'd move on with the next item on the list.
  - jaclaz 4y ago
    >Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece is de-facto OTC (you can go to a pharmacy with an A4 blank piece of paper and 'be your own doctor' by writing in what you need by hand and signing it off still as 'your own doctor' with a fantasy name and a cool autograph). Cannot say in the other countries, but in Italy you definitely cannot do that, the pharmacist wants a valid prescription (usually by a known MD, you may have even issues in getting some medicines with a valid prescription signed by a doctor in another city/region). It is the first time that I hear about "invented" prescriptions, though probably making fake ones is not difficult.

blendergeek 4y ago

https://lite.cnn.com/2023/03/07/health/fda-drug-shipments-khn-partner https://lite.cnn.com/2023/03/07/health/fda-drug-shipments-kh...

runnerup 4y ago

This is detailing a report from the FDA about packages they inspected. However, I wonder if there's no overlap with packages inspected by the DEA and/or CBP. The FDA might not see many opiate packages if most of the "hot leads" for which packages likely contain opiates are routed to the DEA for inspection and the FDA never sees them. Similarly for any other Schedule 2/3 drugs. That could be why the FDA mostly sees "asthma" drugs. Though...I do believe that international orders would mirror domestic prevalence and lots of people need asthma medication. I myself have ordered asthma medications from India to save hundreds of dollars per month. Anyways, the article states "The FDA said it found 33 packages of opioids and no fentanyl sent by mail in 2022". This was out of 53,000 packages inspected. However, the CBP reports finding 239 mail parcels with fentanyl at just JFK airport alone in 2018[0]. It's unclear how many packages the DEA has seized but it also sounds like a lot more than 33. 0: https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/crisis-control https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/crisis-control

muttled 4y ago
If so, it sounds like there's even less reason for the FDA to be involved if the DEA is already catching the truly illicit stuff. The issue the article takes is that the FDA keeps asking for more and more money to inspect packages for opioids/fentanyl, but is using that money to mostly destroy legitimate medicine. If they had to say what they were actually doing with the money, they might not get it.
- runnerup 4y ago
  FDA seizing drugs that aren't in the NIDA-5 (cocaine/opiates/amphetamines/etc) will get a lot more contentious when the TikTok generation figures out how to skirt domestic shortages of tirzepatide and semaglutide by getting it from non-FDA approved facilities overseas. However, asthma/cancer/ED/heart medications are probably for now more what the critical voting blocks care about.
  - moremetadata 4y ago
    [flagged]

bediger4000 4y ago

Brian Krebs book, Spam Nation, which dissected 2 leaked Russian "online pharmacy" databases, has the same sort of breakdown for US drug orders. European orders had less health related drugs and more "recreational" drugs like erectile pills. If I recall, the online pharmacies would throw in a handful of Viagra in most orders.

NDizzle 4y ago

Misleading headline. "But the agency’s own data from recent years on its confiscation of packages containing drugs coming through international mail provides scant evidence that a significant number of opioids enters this way." No shit. Who is sending opioids via international mail?! How stupid does CNN think we are? How stupid does CNN think drug smugglers are?! They are being waltzed across our porous southern border.

vajrabum 4y ago
Oh, you mean the border where the seizures of fentanyl are at record level and almost of what comes in, comes through the ports of entry in trucks and not some random spot on the border on somebody's back just like you'd expect?
- jeffbee 4y ago
  There are ten million doses of fentanyl to the kilo. Why would you even need a truck? You could walk it across in your pocket.
- starkd 4y ago
  What gets confiscated at ports of entry is only a small fraction of the total that is out there. It is very easy to purchase fentanyl from illegal dealer right now and cheap. That is probably the best way to measure how porous the border truly is.

yamtaddle 4y ago

And just like that, all the moral-panic action around fentanyl makes perfect sense.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago
Opioid related deaths have increased sharply in the past few years, largely due to the influx of Fentanyl: https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd... If you think this is just a “moral panic” then you’re wrong. It’s a severe problem and it’s only getting worse.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Not just, but the media [EDIT: and political] component absolutely is.
colechristensen 4y ago
I talked to this old hippie drug dealer who was talking about all of these things he wouldn’t touch any more because the chance of fentanyl was too high and he’d had friends killed by fentanyl. Exactly the opposite kind of person to be susceptible to that kind of moral panic. Locally they recently did a bust and found enough raw fentanyl for a million lethal doses or enough to get every single person in the extended metro area high. A cheap drug where an amount equal to a few grains of sand can kill is indeed worth the concern.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Sure, but the "public face" of this is stories about fentanyl in kids' candy and cops having seizures after someone tells them they were within ten meters of some fentanyl. That aspect (i.e. the bullshit) is textbook moral-panic stuff.
  - starkd 4y ago
    The hyperbole might be intentional, because it might be the only way to get the word out to the marginalised elements of society that are at greatest risk. I agree is not ideal, because it might lead people to ignore it. But the danger is very real.

awinter-py 4y ago

fascinating there is a private company accrediting foreign pharmacies (pharmacychecker, they guy they quote in the middle) private accreditation feels simultaneously problematic, and something that will fill huge voids left by public licensing systems that have gotten slow or otherwise bad mirrors uber / crypto in that the opportunity is working around something the state wants to own

jeffbee 4y ago

Quick reminder for the younger readers: Customs and Border Patrol has doubled in size in the last 25 years, relative to the size of the population, and in my lifetime has increased the number of agents by 500%. I personally think these losers should get a real job and stop poking around in my mail. The explosion of third-tier fringe law enforcement agencies has not been good for Americans.

notch898a 4y ago
Yeah, that and HSI is now like half the size of the FBI. CBP has 60k people and patrols even the interior of the US, they're basically the modern day gestapo complete with suspension of the constitution within 100 miles of the border (which is where most people live).
- larrik 4y ago
  Especially considering "the border" is all coastlines AND all international airports...
- kridsdale1 4y ago
  ICE behaves more like a gestapo, with bounties for snitching on your friends, but yeah.
gruez 4y ago
>Quick reminder for the younger readers: Customs and Border Patrol has doubled in size in the last 25 years, relative to the size of the population, and in my lifetime has increased the number of agents by 500%. I'm no fan of the CBP but this seems like a flimsy objection. There's no reason to believe why their staffing levels will grow linearly with population. They're tasked with protecting the border, so we'd expect their staffing levels to grow linearly with the amount of border that needs protecting. If there's more stuff coming in (eg. aliexpress shipments from china), or more border crossings (legal or otherwise), we'd expect their numbers to grow faster relative to population.
- jeffbee 4y ago

gtop3 4y ago

Our prescription drug system needs an overhaul. This isn't a matter of all drugs are illegal to import because of quality control issues. You can import aspirin, if you are so inclined. This is asthma and cancer medication being seized because of an overly tight control of prescription drugs. I understand that some drugs sold overseas are not suitable for human consumption. I understand that some drugs require close supervision. I argue that many medications are quite safe to take without supervision and using doctors as gatekeepers functions primarily to increase the billings generated by sick people. I think the bar for what medications are prescription and which medications are OTC needs to be reevaluated. Perhaps the way in which we market drugs and disclose there risks should be reevaluated simultaneously. Imagine taking away someone's asthma medication and thinking you are making America a safer, better place.

mschuster91 4y ago
The international pharmaceutical trade market is already under fire with contamination and fraud issues as it is. 300.000 to 1 million people are estimated to die each year from that per the WHO [1] - that's frankly insane, and it's not just fake penis enlargement pills that people buy on random spam platforms, but the fraudsters even manage to penetrate into the legitimate supply chain of German pharmacies. The solution is obvious: more domestic production, and for the US to get their shit together. You don't need to throw pills for every little cough, the fact that y'all have ads for prescription medicine is completely mind-blowing. Like, I go to the doctor with symptoms, not with a shopping list of stuff shilled in yesterday's cable news. [1] https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/securpharm-101.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/securpharm-101.html
- 55555 4y ago
  Anytime the topic of the FDA/customs seizing pharma drugs imported by Americans comes up, big pharma and confused citizens conflate the amount of counterfeit branded drugs with actually dangerous drugs. No one is fighting for the right to be able to buy fake Cialis. They are fighting for the right to buy generic Tadalafil manufactured by billion-dollar Indian companies trusted by over a billion people with the proper FDA certifications in India. Those who mislabel their brand should still be prosecuted. That's barely relevant. Yes, we take too many drugs. But we also don't take enough, because we can't afford it, because we're all being squeezed by big pharma. (You're also conflating the Americans who have decent health insurance with those who don't.) And almost no health insurance covers dick pills and no adult should have to explain to a stranger that their dick doesn't work to get their permission to take a super safe drug with a few clearly-described risks. (The truth is, half the online pharma business is literally just dick pills. Half.) I've been interested in this topic for 15+ years. The good news is, despite what this article may lead a casual reader to believe, 99% of the DEA-uncontrolled medications imported are not seized. You can order them safely, and if they are seized, they shipper will probably send them again for free, and you won't have any legal issues.

Pxtl 4y ago

This feels like a "streetlight effect" where they're searching where it's easy to search. Obviously fentanyl is a serious problem in the USA and needs to be tackled, but this kind of indicates that the mail is not the main vector for it getting into the USA, rather comparatively harmless stuff.

Spivak 4y ago
> Obviously fentanyl is a serious problem in the USA and needs to be tackled But for some reason it's politically untenable to tackle it in ways that actually help people -- by providing free test strips at corner stores. Being able to easily and reliably test drugs for fentanyl would make using it as an additive worthless. The US really said "abstinence only" with no self-awareness that it doesn't work for sex, drugs, or rock and roll. Any solution that doesn't involve "no drug use" even if it saves lives is is of no interest. Which is surprising because the people I know who snort cocaine like Dysons are well to do white folks.
- starkd 4y ago
  Those easy test kits have their own false positive/false negative error rates. So, it give a false sense of security. More effective to just raise the alarm that it could be in most illegal drugs, because it most likely is.
  - badwolf 4y ago
    They are also illegal in Texas, as they're considered paraphernalia.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Raising the alarm isn't actionable though. Okay great you know that there's a not insignificant chance that the bag of bag of molly you just bought is laced with fentanyl, what do you do about it? Because I promise you everyone who does party drugs knows about fentanyl, doesn't stop them though.

steponlego 4y ago

Are people really dying because of an epidemic of asthma drugs and cancer drugs and penis pills being improperly prescribed and mailed? No. The public health issue is centered around opioids. This is like saying, oh gee, never mind dioxin, so many more people die in car wrecks. Yellow journalism probably paid for by big pharma.