4 ms·

Just make high quality opioids easy to get already. It should be as common as beer. The present system is deranged.

• lom 3y ago
  How does that stop OD?
  • swayvil 3y ago
    Here's how. If you have good opioids in hand then there's no need to buy opioids of uncertain strength from dubious sources. Thus your dosage is more controllable. If your supply is reliable then there is no seesaw of deprivation when you're out and overindulgence when you're flush. For further data, apply the same logic that keeps people from oding on alchohol.
    • bottlelion 3y ago
      And then what? Does overall opioid use go up? Or do you believe it would stay the same?
      • maximus-decimus 3y ago
        Is that the metric we care about? Wouldn't "amount of people dying of opiods" and "amount of people having their lives ruined by opiods" be better ones? Th way I see it, alcohol issues wouldn't be reduced if you made it illegal and less people drank it, but now people are drinking unregulated moonshine that makes them blind or kills them because it contains methanol and isopropanol.
    • Workaccount2 3y ago
      I think clinics with pills are the best compromise here. It would be insane to have otc access to opioids. It's not like addicts live normal lives and OD'ing is the only danger.
  • ses1984 3y ago
    It doesn’t stop OD, but it reduces OD because it eliminates one type of very common OD: people taking seemingly safe quantities of drugs that have been laced with fentanyl.
    • Loughla 3y ago
      Is that common? I'm not trying to deflect, but do you have statistics for that? Because I've never seen stats to back that up, other than that illegal synthetic opioids are the leading cause of OD. Those aren't necessarily the same thing, and I would like to know more about the actual reason behind OD's.
      • ses1984 3y ago
        Statistics are fuzzy on this, because you can’t always positively determine intent, to separate accidental overdose from suicide. The number of overdose deaths are spiking, driven by fentanyl. That is 100% fact based. Now you have to make a qualitative judgement: I think most ODs are accidental when this is studied. Did a whole shitload of drug users just become unusually suicidal? I would say it’s safer to assume “no” unless you see evidence to the contrary. http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/sapc/MDU/SpecialReport/FentanylOverdosesInLosAngelesCounty.pdf http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/sapc/MDU/SpecialReport/Fent... Look at figure 2 here: https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd...
• impossiblefork 3y ago
  It's a bad idea. Opioids are incredibly addictive. At one point something like 25% of the male population of China 'regularly consumed' opium, i.e. they were addicted to it, and China has always been a country with at least a certain sense of order. Opium is also special, even among other dangerous drugs. It takes over your brain's reward system and makes things you previously regarded as pleasurable as uninteresting compared to opium. It permanently destroys people. Making it common as beer is a terrible idea. Rather I think it's likely that the opium sellers and everyone associated with the distribution and marketing of opioids need to be dealt with quite brutally. Don't think of things like carfentanil as a drugs. Think of them as chemical weapons.
  • swayvil 3y ago
    Consider that 10% of the population is on antidepressants. And the world hasn't blown up. Given the choice between antidepressants and opioids, I'll take opioids.
    • TylerE 3y ago
      Honestly I think much of the harm has been from overreaction to the first wave. People who could have been stable on a dose of OxyContin or some other moderate strength opioid, and instead are getting whatever on the street.
      • Clubber 3y ago
        When people take prescription opioids, the dose is right there on the pill. People are going to take them anyway, wouldn't you prefer they know what they are taking? That will never happen in the US because we consider it a moral failing, but it's obvious that taking a drug with a dosage stamped on it is better than taking something mixed in a basement somewhere. Let's take the moral failure out of it. Imagine if Tylenol was random dosages that ranged from fake to a dosage that would induce total liver failure. That would be absurd.
    • impossiblefork 3y ago
      Opioids are almost certainly worse than antidepressants, and I don't see why you appear to believe that they are alternatives to each other. Any entity participating in an endeavour which as part of its activities distributes, markets or which through propaganda or political action defends the use of opioids must be destroyed, because opioids are a chemical weapon. They aren't 'illegal drugs'. They're a means to destroy somebody, and that is all they are.
• nobodyandproud 3y ago
  The best interpretation: Create health specialists for managing and treating addicts so that they can still live productive lives. You're advocating for Portugal's model, but note that it's subject to economics and politics (see https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/is-portugals-drug-decriminalization-a-failure-or-success-the-answer-isnt-so-simple/ https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/is-portugals-dru...), while the withdrawal symptoms are not. I think a two-prong approach is necessary and I worry about the perverse incentive of healthcare specialists or medication experts wanting to maintain a pool of addicts long-term. I had an informal debate with a former roommate--and to help him along the above was the one counterargument I thought of and I still don't have a good solution. Opiods are in a class of their own.
• insane_dreamer 3y ago
  > Just make high quality opioids easy to get already. It should be as common as beer. wtaf? this is literally what caused the current crisis in the first place