8 ms·
Synthetic opioids deadlier than fentanyl are showing up in overdose cases
- junofan 3y agoI’m not a public health expert but I don’t see how the status quo is preferable to letting anybody buy codeine at CVS. I’m seeing a lot of suffering in my neighborhood and a lot of money going towards it that could be better spent on other problems.
- Euphorbium 3y agoYou will have to rip easy drug money from the cold dead cop hands.
- Loughla 3y agoCan you buy codeine over the counter? Where I live, any painkiller/opioid is exclusively by prescription.
- diag 3y agoHave you been to Canada? It's not hard to walk in a pharmacy and get it.
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- NikkiA 3y agoNot pure codeine, but co-codamol (codeine/paracetamol mix) is OTC in about half of europe, and the UK.
- ccooffee 3y agoAccording to "Codeine" from the Canadian government[0]: > Certain lower-dose codeine products (8 mg or less per pill, 20 mg or less per 30 mL of liquid medication) can be purchased directly from a pharmacist without a prescription to temporarily treat mild or moderate pain, or as a cough suppressant. [0] https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/substance-use/controlled-illegal-drugs/codeine.html https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/substance-us...
- standardUser 3y agoI wouldn't mind having access to codeine because it is a very effective painkiller compared to OTC stuff in the US. I also don't mind not having access because I find the addictive potential of opioids personally threatening. None of that matters to heroin users or users of more powerful prescription opioids because codeine will not give them the high they want. A better model would be something along the lines of marijuana dispensaries or state-run liquor stores, where legal sales can be made but with added levels of difficulty/obscurity. That kind of rigid legalization scheme probably wouldn't kill the black market, but it would absolutely save lives. Many people who are dead today would still be alive if they could have simply purchased a safe version of the drug they were going to do either way.
- aodonnell2536 3y agoIt’s my understanding that a similar compound known as dihydrocodeine (DHC) is sold OTC in some European countries, and is abused in a similar manner to how dextromethorphan (DXM) is abused in the US.
- scarby2 3y agoco-codamol is available in the UK over the counter which is a mix or paracetamol (acetaminophen) and codeine. It's not abused that much as i'm aware as you'd need to take enough for the paracetamol to do yourself serious harm in order to get high).
- glimshe 3y agoHave you heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamizole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamizole ? Widely used outside the US, but illegal to prescribe here. But you can own it here as long as you are not prescribing it. It's not as potent as an opioid, but it's a step up from the OTC stuff. I often buy it when traveling abroad (a bottle costs less than a dollar in Latin America) and my family has used it for years as millions of people abroad. There are concerns with safety, but according to plenty of foreign research, these risks are comparable to other, widely used medicine, and are based on outdated results. This medicine is so cheap it wouldn't be profitable to do new trials in the US, thus we will likely not see this sold here anytime soon. Anyway, this is not medical advice!
- evil-olive 3y agoutterly predictable outcome: > The iron law of prohibition is a term coined by Richard Cowan in 1986 which posits that as law enforcement becomes more intense, the potency of prohibited substances increases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_prohibition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_prohibition
- standardUser 3y agoA more unusual trend I've noticed is that the price of illicit drugs has generally decreased over the past few decades. If you adjust for inflation, most drugs are now cheaper despite countless fortunes (of our money) wasted on trying to stop their production and sale.
- pixl97 3y agoDrugs have almost always been cheap in production costs. It was the risk that drove up retail costs. Heh, and better enforcement actually pulls more manufactures into the market, because while the risk increases, the potential profits tend to increase even more.
- jstarfish 3y ago> A more unusual trend I've noticed is that the price of illicit drugs has generally decreased over the past few decades. If you adjust for inflation, most drugs are now cheaper despite countless fortunes (of our money) wasted on trying to stop their production and sale. I assume this is because everything is being diluted with cheap fentanyl.
- standardUser 3y agoNo, not at all. In fact, heroin is one of the few drugs I don't know where to purchase and I have no idea what it costs. But for drugs I do know and sometimes purchase, dollar prices have barely budged while the value of the dollar has declined (compared to the 90's). It's still $60-$120 for a gram of cocaine. It's still $3-$5 for a hit of acid. It's still $20-$30 for an eighth of shrooms. Ecstasy pills sometimes go for $30 now, but you can still find them for $20 just like in the 90's.
- analyte123 3y agoIf the deadly compounds are not approved for medical usage anywhere in the world, they should simply be treated as chemical weapons. Even if you want to quibble about the intent of the dealers, something this lethal could be easily weaponized to kill hundreds with nothing more than a battery powered fan.
- flenserboy 3y agoIt feels much more like an act of war than a ratcheting up by drug purveyors.
- local_crmdgeon 3y agoIt's retribution for the humiliation and destruction of the Opium Wars.
- seiferteric 3y agoWas the US even involved with that?
- dendrite9 3y agoSome time ago I heard a journalist comment about the synthetic opioid issue being something akin to the Opium wars but without many of is realizing what is going on. Every so often I see news that makes me think he may have been onto something, I wish I could remember who/where it was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
- buildbot 3y agoRussians literally did this during the Moscow Theater Crisis - they aerosolized Carfentanyl and Remifentanil into the vent system! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis
- chimeracoder 3y ago> If the deadly compounds are not approved for medical usage anywhere in the world, they should simply be treated as chemical weapons. Even if you want to quibble about the intent of the dealers, something this lethal could be easily weaponized to kill hundreds with nothing more than a battery powered fan. You're proposing escalating the drug war to literally unprecedented levels (treating drug users[0] as actual agents of war), in response to a completely nonsense fear (the idea that a "battery-powered fan" would be a viable route of administration). The idea that fentanyl is toxic to the touch or aerosolized is pure police propaganda, contradicted resoundingly not only by all medical experts, but also by common sense (fentanyl is routinely handled in much larger quantities by nurses every day). The same applies to these other drugs - they're dangerous if ingested, but you're not going to be accidentally ingesting them, unless you're ingesting drugs obtained from pharmaceutical sources. [0] No matter how you try to frame this as something that would only be leveraged against "traffickers", drug users will inevitably be the primary targets of any such law.
- koromak 3y agoOnly slightly related anecdote, happened just last week: My 90 year old family member is having their bathroom renovated. 5 shoebox-sized packages arrive at like 4am, labeled "Shower Door". My relative gets up very early, so they see the package come in. They look at the boxes, think a) Thats not a shower door, and b) I'm not installing shower doors, so my relative opens them. Inside are nondescript bundles of powder. My relative has no clue what it is. They call the contractor, the contractor comes over, takes one look, and calls the cops. It turns out to be 10+ pounds of fentanyl. So clearly someone working with the contractor has a scheme going, where they target elderly, unsavvy people in order to ship hundreds of thousands of dollars of fentanyl in the middle of the night. The subcontractor presumably slips in before the homeowner notices, most people aren't awake at 5am checking building material deliveries. The carrier was just some general shipping company. Not a big name, but not shady either. They had no idea what was being carried. We don't think its the main contractor, because he easily could have gotten away with it. He could have said "Oh this is grout mix" and my relative would have been perfectly happy. I guess its a possibility though. Supposedly the cops are looking into it, so I guess we'll see what happens.
- windsurfer 3y ago10 pounds of fentanyl is enough to lethally overdose about 2 million people.
- chimeracoder 3y ago> 10 pounds of fentanyl is enough to lethally overdose about 2 million people. I'm not sure what the point of this comment is. Fentanyl is only dangerous if ingested; incidental contact is harmless. That shipment was, in all likelihood, intended for eventual distribution to opiate users, who have a higher tolerance than the general population. Making a comparison of how that would affect a person who has no tolerance is misleading fearmongering, when there was no indication that any person in this story was going to accidentally ingest the substance.
- scarby2 3y ago
- flerchin 3y agoI don't understand the mentality of people who partake in these things. Everyone has seen the zombies in the streets. Who looks at the human misery that is the direct consequence of opioid abuse and decides "It won't happen to me, I'll take two fentanyls please Mr Drug Dealer"?
- glimshe 3y agoIn a nutshell, addiction. If people could just easily walk away from it through moral reasoning, the problem wouldn't be happening at the scale it is. And the first contact with the drug is triggered by other things, like pain, peer pressure etc.
- alecco 3y agoIMHO working on this at an NGO, these are mostly people who hate themselves and have extreme depression. They will take anything, even poison. They usually are not looking for a high but complete detachment. The solution is intervention but this is out of fashion thanks for campaigns against it. From Foucault to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Their magic solution for the broken system was to destroy the system. Now he have all these "zombies" who are just slowly killing themselves, in front of us, and they are causing a lot crime and problems. The problem is snowballing and will end up in unspeakable solutions. It's sad.
- 650REDHAIR 3y agoMost people aren’t buying fentanyl. They’re buying something else that is laced or cut with fentanyl. Typically the end user is unaware.
- flerchin 3y agoThat just slightly changes the question to the drug dealer. People, seeing zombies in the streets, are still making purchases.
- 650REDHAIR 3y agoBy calling human beings zombies I’m going to assume you lack any empathy. As someone who works on the forefront of this epidemic (EMS) I can say with near 100% certainty you know people who consume drugs.