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> I think Narcan being made OTC recently is an attempt at reducing the risk of overdose ending in death at least My theory is that this is why there is so much
by jollyllama 4y ago
> I think Narcan being made OTC recently is an attempt at reducing the risk of overdose ending in death at least
My theory is that this is why there is so much more fentanyl. If you think of a street level hard drug dealer, other than law enforcement, his biggest problem is the churn of his customer base due to overdoses/prison/going clean. The logical consequence of preventing overdoses is that his customer base will have less churn, expand more over time, and be more profitable. The effect of that is that organized crime becomes a bigger business, with all that entails.
- ethanbond 4y agoI’ve never heard that customers churning out is a problem for dealers. My understanding is that someone ODing is actually good marketing for their product quality and will bring in more customers.
- skyyler 4y agoThat's old fashioned, from a time when it meant that the heroin wasn't cut with a bunch of inactive stuff. Nowadays someone ODing means your stuff is cut with fent, which isn't good marketing.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y agoWhen every dealers known for ODs it stops becoming a concern.
- jollyllama 4y agoCustomer retention rate must necessarily be an implicit property of any business, even drug dealing.
- ethanbond 4y agoDifferent businesses are more or less sensitive to different variables
- chasd00 4y ago> The logical consequence of preventing overdoses is that his customer base will have less churn, expand more over time, and be more profitable. street dealers aren't that sophisticated in my experience. If there's competition they just kill each other. They don't have to worry about demand because addiction handles it for them. All the actual street dealers i've encountered ( quite a few in my 20s ) were basically the equivalent of a vending machine. edit: well i will admit one clever setup i saw in old East Dallas. A drug house started taking copper as payment for drugs because, at the time, copper scrap was very valuable. So like the dealer would take a bunch of copper pipe in trade for drugs. It made for a rash of ridiculous copper thefts, like breaking into and stealing all the wire out of the walls in apartment construction sites.
- jollyllama 4y agoI'm not describing any sophistication on the part of the dealers; what I'm attempting to describe is more akin to the proliferation of a species in a given ecological niche if more food were introduced. If the drug users die less, the dealers have more customers and make more money, and everything else follows from there.
- strbean 4y agoI overheard an interesting tinfoil-hat theory about these overdoses, particularly why they seem to come in waves. It goes something like this: - The best customers are newly minted addicts. They still have jobs, personally property, and friends and family who trust them. They can spend massive amounts of money quickly. - Over time, these customers lose access to money as they spiral into addiction. They lose their jobs, run out of things to sell, and run out of friends and family to steal from. - Eventually, they end up breaking into cars, stealing from businesses, mugging people, and committing burglary. - This increase in crime attracts the attention of the general public and law enforcement. - Drug dealers, in order to refresh their customer base and start the cycle over, distribute a 'hot' batch of product that kills off many of their customers. Not sure how sound this theory is, but I thought it was interesting.
- jollyllama 4y agoInteresting theory, but the last step doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Wouldn't the dealers be happy to take the money, no matter how the users can get it, and just focus on finding new customers?
- strbean 4y agoThe idea is that deaths of drug addicts attract less heat than property crimes. Questionable for sure.