4 ms·

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

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.

flenserboy 3y ago
It feels much more like an act of war than a ratcheting up by drug purveyors.
- local_crmdgeon 3y ago
  It's retribution for the humiliation and destruction of the Opium Wars.
  - seiferteric 3y ago
    Was the US even involved with that?
- dendrite9 3y ago
  Some 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 ago
Russians 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.
- analyte123 3y ago
  Aerosolized fentanyl is literally produced for administration as a painkiller [1]. And there is also the Russian theater incident. Nurses handle prediluted solutions (at the level of 50mcg/ml). That is still very strong but not the same as unknown quantities of unknown potency being secretly shipped around and mixed up by untrained dealers. Currently, all the time, people mix up drugs with synthetics that they know can kill and sell it to unsuspecting people, who then die by the dozens. Some states already treat this as poisoning and manslaughter. Is this really that different from the scenario I’m describing? [1] https://medlineplus.gov/druginfo/meds/a612015.html https://medlineplus.gov/druginfo/meds/a612015.html
  - chimeracoder 3y ago
    > Aerosolized fentanyl is literally produced for administration as a painkiller There are literally orders of magnitude of difference between fentanyl administered as a nasal spray and fentanyl being used as a weapon. They're not remotely comparable. > And there is also the Russian theater incident. I don't know why people keep bringing this up. There is zero evidence that fentanyl or its derivatives were responsible for any deaths. The claim that fentanyl was responsible is based on a single study which claimed to find fentanyl on one sample of clothing and in the urine of two survivors, something which has a lot more plausible explanations.

flenserboy 3y ago

It feels much more like an act of war than a ratcheting up by drug purveyors.

local_crmdgeon 3y ago
It's retribution for the humiliation and destruction of the Opium Wars.
- seiferteric 3y ago
  Was the US even involved with that?
dendrite9 3y ago
Some 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 ago

Russians 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.

analyte123 3y ago
Aerosolized fentanyl is literally produced for administration as a painkiller [1]. And there is also the Russian theater incident. Nurses handle prediluted solutions (at the level of 50mcg/ml). That is still very strong but not the same as unknown quantities of unknown potency being secretly shipped around and mixed up by untrained dealers. Currently, all the time, people mix up drugs with synthetics that they know can kill and sell it to unsuspecting people, who then die by the dozens. Some states already treat this as poisoning and manslaughter. Is this really that different from the scenario I’m describing? [1] https://medlineplus.gov/druginfo/meds/a612015.html https://medlineplus.gov/druginfo/meds/a612015.html
- chimeracoder 3y ago
  > Aerosolized fentanyl is literally produced for administration as a painkiller There are literally orders of magnitude of difference between fentanyl administered as a nasal spray and fentanyl being used as a weapon. They're not remotely comparable. > And there is also the Russian theater incident. I don't know why people keep bringing this up. There is zero evidence that fentanyl or its derivatives were responsible for any deaths. The claim that fentanyl was responsible is based on a single study which claimed to find fentanyl on one sample of clothing and in the urine of two survivors, something which has a lot more plausible explanations.