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[WSJ] Fentanyl Crisis: Over 100,000 overdose deaths per 12 months in the United States for the first time

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member

"
The U.S. recorded its highest number of drug-overdose deaths in a 12-month period, eclipsing 100,000 for the first time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There were an estimated 100,306 drug deaths in the 12 months running through April, the latest CDC data show. This marks a nearly 29% rise from the deaths recorded in the same period a year earlier, indicating the U.S. is heading for another full-year record after drug deaths soared during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It’s telling us that 2021 looks like it will be worse than 2020,” said Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

Opioid-related deaths, mainly fueled by the potent drug fentanyl, accounted for about three quarters of the deaths through April, according to the CDC, which counts provisional drug deaths in yearlong blocks. These records take months to compile because drug overdoses typically require local death investigations and toxicology tests.

Fentanyl has for years been a major catalyst in an intensifying U.S. overdose crisis. The nation was reporting fewer than 50,000 fatal overdoses as recently as 2014. In 2020, the number surged to a record of about 93,330.

The pandemic intensified opioid problems in many ways, from increasing isolation among people trying to maintain their sobriety to complicating treatment, according to advocates for drug users and those in recovery. The pandemic has also been a major draw on resources and attention for public health authorities, who are still trying to manage Covid-19.

Bootleg versions of fentanyl are often made by drug cartels in Mexico with chemicals from China, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. While fentanyl hit hard in places like New England, Appalachian and Midwest states several years ago, the drug is a fast-growing problem in western parts of the U.S. now, too. The DEA recently warned of a proliferation in fake pills containing fentanyl.

Fentanyl-related deaths are soaring in the Las Vegas area, where the Southern Nevada Health District has recorded 160 deaths with the drug through August this year. This puts the region on pace to potentially surpass the 193 fentanyl deaths seen last year, said Brandon Delise, an epidemiologist with the health district.
"
 

JayK47

Member
This stuff is concerning. Such a tiny dose is deadly. Could easily be used by terrorists. So much of it is flooding through the open border. I am guessing 2022 will be way worse.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Never understood the drug craze.

#1 It's fun, cool, lets all do some shit at a club or someone's basement and get high. Were invincible! Chances of dying s almost 0%!
#2 My life is a trainwreck. I need to get high so I can forget about my shitty life as I need to do drugs to kill time

Counter

Uber #1 What a waste of money. Especially for losers already broke to begin with. Maybe that's a benefit of being a cheap ass like me. Dumb shit I'm not paying for and being broke is a phobia
#1 If you need to snort, inject or eat drugs to have fun and be cool, go ahead. But you're not
#2 Well, maybe if you got off your ass and did something youre life would be better. It wont improve if you're stoned and drooling lying on a couch all day
 

Nikodemos

Member
Fent is extremely attractive for traffickers because the active dose is several hundred micrograms. Meaning that a single kilo (1 million micrograms) can be cut into a thousand+ separate doses.

Problem is, since the active dose is so small, it's excessively easy to overdose on it, when taking black-market fent.
 

Enjay

Banned
Is it weird that everything is reportedly killing us in the six figure mark lately? Like do we reproduce like fruit flies or what?
 

nush

Gold Member
Never understood the drug craze.

#1 It's fun, cool, lets all do some shit at a club or someone's basement and get high. Were invincible! Chances of dying s almost 0%!
#2 My life is a trainwreck. I need to get high so I can forget about my shitty life as I need to do drugs to kill time

Counter

Uber #1 What a waste of money. Especially for losers already broke to begin with. Maybe that's a benefit of being a cheap ass like me. Dumb shit I'm not paying for and being broke is a phobia
#1 If you need to snort, inject or eat drugs to have fun and be cool, go ahead. But you're not
#2 Well, maybe if you got off your ass and did something youre life would be better. It wont improve if you're stoned and drooling lying on a couch all day

Moderation is the key, don't make it a lifestyle. Get educated about what drugs to just stay the hell away from and those people that make it a lifestyle.
 
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Sub_Level

wants to fuck an Asian grill.
There are advantages to controlling your borders.

Sure but at least half the product (probably a lot more) is coming through ports of entry not illegal crossings. We can have minefields, drone patrols, and shark moats but the drugs are still getting in. Cartel doesn't care if some of their guys inevitably get caught; they have enough traffickers willing to risk it & high enough profit margins to take the seizure losses.

Don't want to say we shouldn't try. But a whole hell of a lotta people are still gonna die because there's high demand, not just high supply.
 
I remember seeing a billion "Pain Management" clinics during the hight of the oxy craze, they were everywhere in Florida.
They created a legion of addicts, and when the legislation passed to close the clinics down most of them turned to heroin.
Now that Fentanyl is on the scene it is killing people in droves. Something the size of a few grains of sand can kill you, it is some scary shit.
Oxys and morphine are already insanely potent, what in the hell is fent used for?
 
I remember seeing a billion "Pain Management" clinics during the hight of the oxy craze, they were everywhere in Florida.
They created a legion of addicts, and when the legislation passed to close the clinics down most of them turned to heroin.
Now that Fentanyl is on the scene it is killing people in droves. Something the size of a few grains of sand can kill you, it is some scary shit.
Oxys and morphine are already insanely potent, what in the hell is fent used for?
Pain management. It's used in patch form a lot for chronic pain. It can also be used for severe breakthrough pain in people already getting pain meds that aren't working well, like in oncology treatment.

That's crazy about the "pain management" clinics. We never had those where I live. Seems to be a lot more common on the east coast states.
 
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Aesius

Member
Never understood the drug craze.

#1 It's fun, cool, lets all do some shit at a club or someone's basement and get high. Were invincible! Chances of dying s almost 0%!
#2 My life is a trainwreck. I need to get high so I can forget about my shitty life as I need to do drugs to kill time

Counter

Uber #1 What a waste of money. Especially for losers already broke to begin with. Maybe that's a benefit of being a cheap ass like me. Dumb shit I'm not paying for and being broke is a phobia
#1 If you need to snort, inject or eat drugs to have fun and be cool, go ahead. But you're not
#2 Well, maybe if you got off your ass and did something youre life would be better. It wont improve if you're stoned and drooling lying on a couch all day
Most people don't just immediately become hardcore drug users and addicts. It's a gradual process. Mental illness, abusive upbringings, bad peer influences, and addictive personalities also play a big role in it.
 

Mistake

Member
Sure but at least half the product (probably a lot more) is coming through ports of entry not illegal crossings. We can have minefields, drone patrols, and shark moats but the drugs are still getting in. Cartel doesn't care if some of their guys inevitably get caught; they have enough traffickers willing to risk it & high enough profit margins to take the seizure losses.

Don't want to say we shouldn't try. But a whole hell of a lotta people are still gonna die because there's high demand, not just high supply.
True. I didn’t hear too much about how awful the border was when heroin was going crazy throughout the country. I assume most of the routes for trafficking this junk has already been established, and officials have admitted that as soon as one ring gets closed, another pops up. Still, lax security almost certainly exasperates the problem. Things are getting so bad, one guy down the road from me overdosed, and I live in the middle of nowhere.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Most people don't just immediately become hardcore drug users and addicts. It's a gradual process. Mental illness, abusive upbringings, bad peer influences, and addictive personalities also play a big role in it.
Thats what makes booze an drug addictions even dumber. You got to put money and effort into it to be an addict.

It's not like someone drinks a beer for the first time and overnight the guy has a red nosed temptation to buy a case the next day. Yet some people just keep chugging.

Or meth heads who do it so much, they literally look like zombies with their teeth and face falling off. Amazing people keep doing it. A bad zit on my face was bad enough to gross me out. Who the hell wants giant sores on their face 24/7?
 

Thaedolus

Member
Thats what makes booze an drug addictions even dumber. You got to put money and effort into it to be an addict.

It's not like someone drinks a beer for the first time and overnight the guy has a red nosed temptation to buy a case the next day. Yet some people just keep chugging.

Or meth heads who do it so much, they literally look like zombies with their teeth and face falling off. Amazing people keep doing it. A bad zit on my face was bad enough to gross me out. Who the hell wants giant sores on their face 24/7?

Once people are at the point they've got sores and shit, they're already addicts. They know their behavior is fucking themselves over, but it's a compulsion at that point. Physical withdrawal symptoms can be terrible, on top of the mental addiction. The reason the advice is so often to "get help" is because people literally can't do it on their own. They don't have the resources, they've probably burned a lot of bridges, and they're desperate. Punishing them with the prison system or calling them dumb has time and time again shown to not help anything. Countries that have decriminalized and spent resources on treatment have consistently shown this to be the way, but around here we just continue the beatings until morale improves.
 
Once people are at the point they've got sores and shit, they're already addicts. They know their behavior is fucking themselves over, but it's a compulsion at that point. Physical withdrawal symptoms can be terrible, on top of the mental addiction. The reason the advice is so often to "get help" is because people literally can't do it on their own. They don't have the resources, they've probably burned a lot of bridges, and they're desperate. Punishing them with the prison system or calling them dumb has time and time again shown to not help anything. Countries that have decriminalized and spent resources on treatment have consistently shown this to be the way, but around here we just continue the beatings until morale improves.
That's because it's profitable for private prisons to pack them full of drug addicts. You hit the nail on the head for everything else you said though.
 

EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
Drug overdose is nothing to celebrate even if they’re mostly bad people it definitely joins meth, krockadil, and bath salts.
 

TheInfamousKira

Reseterror Resettler
Is it weird that everything is reportedly killing us in the six figure mark lately? Like do we reproduce like fruit flies or what?

I think it's more of a matter of bulking up numbers to support narrative/get people to take an issue seriously, sometimes. If you were driving home from a KFC and got t-boned by an 18 wheeler, you could TECHNICALLY fit into "fried food related death," if you wanted to prove a point against fast food. I'm sure there's a fine layer of THOSE situations. Not at all saying fent ISN'T horribly toxic and easy to kill yourself with. I spent ten years in the deep South, and that shit was a fan favorite of minimum wage workers to take the edge off a long day. I know what it's capable of.
 
Drug overdose is nothing to celebrate even if they’re mostly bad people it definitely joins meth, krockadil, and bath salts.

I agree. I do want to say though, I think most of them are not bad people. They just aren't capable of coping with the society we have produced, or the pleasure that their particular biology produces when interacting with these drugs.

In the same family I know people who drink responsibly, don't drink at all, and others who are full blown alcoholics who cannot manage their lives. To me what explains this is evolution. If some variation or combination of genes caused you to enjoy a particular sensation about 5X as much as everyone else, it would be addicting, at 10X it would be completely overwhelming.

There is a basic philosophical question of, when I eat vanilla ice cream and you do, do we experience it the same? Or is it completely different? I think between individuals there are extreme differences in how they feel with consuming addictive drugs, such that you could give it to some people and they would never want to do it again, and you could give it to another person once or twice and they would be hooked. It's not a moral virtue on the part of one and not the other, it's in their biology.
 
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Mistake

Member
I agree. I do want to say though, I think most of them are not bad people. They just aren't capable of coping with the society we have produced, or the pleasure that their particular biology produces when interacting with these drugs.

In the same family I know people who drink responsibly, don't drink at all, and others who are full blown alcoholics who cannot manage their lives. To me what explains this is evolution. If some variation of gene caused you to enjoy a particular sensation about 5X as much as everyone else, it would be addicting, at 10X it would be completely overwhelming.

There is a basic philosophical question of, when I eat vanilla ice cream and you do, do we experience it the same? Or is it completely different? I think between individuals there are extreme differences in how they feel with consuming addictive drugs, such that you could give it to some people and they would never want to do it again, and you could give it to another person once or twice and they would be hooked. It's not a moral virtue on the part of one and not the other, it's in their biology.
Alcohol is legal, but I drank from the bottle once and almost died. I imagine some people try drugs out of curiosity, depression, or other factors. It probably starts as a simple mistake and takes a turn for the worse.
 
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Alcohol is legal, but I drank from the bottle once and almost died. I imagine some people try drugs out of curiosity, depression, or other factors. For some it probably starts as a simple mistake and takes a turn for the worse.

My point is I think that the experiences of addicts are different. I think if a person who would completely abstain from alcohol has three drinks, and a person who would become an alcoholic has three drinks, what they feel is different due to their biology. I think the person who would become an addict of anything, due to their biology enjoys it much more than the general population does.
 

nush

Gold Member
I agree. I do want to say though, I think most of them are not bad people. They just aren't capable of coping with the society we have produced, or the pleasure that their particular biology produces when interacting with these drugs.

In the same family I know people who drink responsibly, don't drink at all, and others who are full blown alcoholics who cannot manage their lives. To me what explains this is evolution. If some variation or combination of genes caused you to enjoy a particular sensation about 5X as much as everyone else, it would be addicting, at 10X it would be completely overwhelming.

There is a basic philosophical question of, when I eat vanilla ice cream and you do, do we experience it the same? Or is it completely different? I think between individuals there are extreme differences in how they feel with consuming addictive drugs, such that you could give it to some people and they would never want to do it again, and you could give it to another person once or twice and they would be hooked. It's not a moral virtue on the part of one and not the other, it's in their biology.

I'm of the opinion that obesity is an addiction and should be considered and treated as such. Foods not harmful, or addictive right? /s
 
I'm of the opinion that obesity is an addiction and should be considered and treated as such. Foods not harmful, or addictive right? /s

Obesity could be either poor education about diet, bad lifestyle habits, or an addiction to simple carbohydrates. Regardless the answer is that the state should require you to exercise a certain number of hours a week and upload the results to an app like strava in order to get government funded healthcare. This is how we would institute universal healthcare if I was in charge of everything.
 

BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
Never understood the drug craze.

#1 It's fun, cool, lets all do some shit at a club or someone's basement and get high. Were invincible! Chances of dying s almost 0%!
#2 My life is a trainwreck. I need to get high so I can forget about my shitty life as I need to do drugs to kill time

Counter

Uber #1 What a waste of money. Especially for losers already broke to begin with. Maybe that's a benefit of being a cheap ass like me. Dumb shit I'm not paying for and being broke is a phobia
#1 If you need to snort, inject or eat drugs to have fun and be cool, go ahead. But you're not
#2 Well, maybe if you got off your ass and did something youre life would be better. It wont improve if you're stoned and drooling lying on a couch all day

In the case of opioids, they are extremely addictive and can (and most of the time do) quickly form physical dependence if used for any purpose that isn't very short term relief of unbearable pain. I don't blame the people who got addicted. I blame the unscrupulous drug companies that pushed it on doctors, and those doctors for continuing to prescribe it even when they knew the drugs were never meant for prolonged use.

People tend to trust their doctors. They just wanted relief from pain. Instead they end up with their brains and bodies so rewired by the drug that simply trying to quit taking it can now literally kill them. It's sad.

Fentanyl is being opportunistically used because it's so cheap and easy, in comparison, to produce. I don't know how the government should fight it, as it's everywhere - coming from within and without. But I do know that whatever they've been trying for the past four or five years has clearly not been enough.
 
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Aesius

Member
In the case of opioids, they are extremely addictive and can (and most of the time do) quickly form physical dependence if used for any purpose that isn't very short term relief of unbearable pain. I don't blame the people who got addicted. I blame the unscrupulous drug companies that pushed it on doctors, and those doctors for continuing to prescribe it even when they knew the drugs were never meant for prolonged use.

People tend to trust their doctors. They just wanted relief from pain. Instead they end up with their brains and bodies so rewired by the drug that simply trying to quit taking it can now literally kill them. It's sad.

Fentanyl is being opportunistically used because it's so cheap and easy, in comparison, to produce. I don't know how the government should fight it, as it's everywhere - coming from within and without. But I do know that whatever they've been trying for the past four or five years has clearly not been enough.
The wildest thing I’ve ever read about opioid addiction is that once it gets really bad, you now have a new bodily need in addition to hunger, thirst, and sleep: more opioids. People say it’s THAT powerful and overwhelming. And apparently it sticks around for years or even forever, which is why so many relapse and ultimately die, as they go back to their old doses but their tolerance has dropped significantly.
 
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Tschumi

Member
Pro tip:

Unless you're getting something fixed, if you're being given things that will manage without fixing, you're a cash tree for a whole range of smug chem peddlers.

(the exception being the chronically in-pain. May I suggest pot and swimming as a first treatment...)
 

Nikodemos

Member
Sad thing about fent is, the original formulation made a lot of logical sense.

It was a thin lollipop taped to somebody's hand. If that person started drifting out of consciousness due to the drug, their arm would become too heavy, and it would fall down, physically removing the lollipop and cutting intake. No risk of overdose.
 

Go_Ly_Dow

Member
Not an expert, but I have listened to a lot of commentary from Conservative thinkers that have broken down some of the causations.

An increasing liberalising society is probably part to blame. No orthodox culture around substance abuse, whether its drinking, weed or whatever, it's becoming more widely acceptable to do whatever the hell you want. This coupled with society these days very much moving away from passing moral judgements, that are very important and exist for people to recognise harmful behaviours in their lives.

The healthcare system is probably also to blame and would explain why OD deaths are 16-20x higher than a lot of European countries, including the UK. When people fall for the cracks, through financial hardship, we do have more safety nets in some European countries.

Finally, the war on drugs has never really existed and legalising is not a quick fix either. South Korea, Japan, Singapore and other countries all adopt a strong zero tolerance approach on all drugs. That's a real war on drugs and it works. Those societies are far from perfect (none are), but you don't see people shooting up on the streets, kids in gangs, complete ghettos and 100,000+ people a year dying from overdoses. Just to point out a few benefits of having a real anti-drug and zero tolerance society.

Before we pin this all on the pandemic too, drug deaths were in the 40k region in 2015 and this sharply rose to 70k+ pre-pandemic by 2017 and has stayed at this level and now risen above it too. This is whilst the economy was booming at levels not seen in a long time. However, that hasn't stopped this scourge on society that isn't going away and will likely get worse if nothing is done about it.
 
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highrider

Banned
Sure but at least half the product (probably a lot more) is coming through ports of entry not illegal crossings. We can have minefields, drone patrols, and shark moats but the drugs are still getting in. Cartel doesn't care if some of their guys inevitably get caught; they have enough traffickers willing to risk it & high enough profit margins to take the seizure losses.

Don't want to say we shouldn't try. But a whole hell of a lotta people are still gonna die because there's high demand, not just high supply.
It’s estimated that 80% of it comes across the southern border.
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
There are advantages to controlling your borders.

USA has 2000 miles of land frontier with México, 5000 miles of land frontier with Canada and almost 100.000 miles of coast.

The War On Drugs was declared by Nixon in 1971. Since then there’s been multiple republican and democrat presidents and the flow of drugs has never stopped.
 

Wildebeest

Member
The main medical problems of opiates are due to overdose, contaminated needles, and users increased tolerance for living in environments which are bad for their health. It is not the same as drugs like alcohol, which are basically overall just directly poisonous. As to why people use it, if they are not in physical pain, I guess their life just sucks a lot more than yours in other ways. Maybe they are both dealing with day to day pain and their life sucks. Not uncommon.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
USA has 2000 miles of land frontier with México, 5000 miles of land frontier with Canada and almost 100.000 miles of coast.

The War On Drugs was declared by Nixon in 1971. Since then there’s been multiple republican and democrat presidents and the flow of drugs has never stopped.
Thats the thing too.

A lot of drugs come from Latin and South America. Two areas that seem to have lots of drugs and are close to the US. So you watch all these drug shows and people smuggle in drugs in small planes and speedboats.

Drugs also follow the money and US people have money.

As for someone above who said Asian countries will kick the shit out of you for drugs, thats another reason too. US is lax. Its got so liberal, its basically a free for all what you can do. Most of the time it's a slap of the wrist. But you see those other countries and despite some of them having money too you dont see drug smugglers and traffickers gone wild over there since everyone knows if youre caught youre a dead duck.

Culture too. Its about self control and the US can be out of whack. You got some countries where drugs are decriminialized (Holland I think), other countries with people with high gun ownership etc.... yet other riche countries dont have druggies everywhere or gun sprees where people go shooting schools every other month. Goes back to what I said before about free for all mentality. Some places have control some dont. Switzerland used to have every guy part of the army for a year and all get a government issued handgun and assault rifle and bullets to go with it. If there's any place in the world where youd think pissed off people would go blasting people is Switzerland. Dont see it. Just imagine if the US gov gave every adult a box of battle gear. Would be crazy. Youd get mass shootings every 20 minutes.

So theres tons of factors.
 

Pagusas

Elden Member
Jeez and I feel bad when I take more than 2 aspirin a day, I wonder how people get to the point of putting something like this in their bodies?
 

Wildebeest

Member
Some places have control some dont. Switzerland used to have every guy part of the army for a year and all get a government issued handgun and assault rifle and bullets to go with it. If there's any place in the world where youd think pissed off people would go blasting people is Switzerland. Dont see it. Just imagine if the US gov gave every adult a box of battle gear. Would be crazy. Youd get mass shootings every 20 minutes.
Those people who have guns in Switzerland have them as part of their voluntary military service. They are trained and disciplined to use them in a way which I would guess is more intense than any "background check", which they would also have to pass. You could argue about which countries have more of a culture of respecting firearms, or of respecting the law or human life, but the Swiss do not have an unregulated wild west gun culture.
 
Never understood the drug craze.

#1 It's fun, cool, lets all do some shit at a club or someone's basement and get high. Were invincible! Chances of dying s almost 0%!
#2 My life is a trainwreck. I need to get high so I can forget about my shitty life as I need to do drugs to kill time

Counter

Uber #1 What a waste of money. Especially for losers already broke to begin with. Maybe that's a benefit of being a cheap ass like me. Dumb shit I'm not paying for and being broke is a phobia
#1 If you need to snort, inject or eat drugs to have fun and be cool, go ahead. But you're not
#2 Well, maybe if you got off your ass and did something youre life would be better. It wont improve if you're stoned and drooling lying on a couch all day
Drugs are fine if you're in the correct state of mind and have completed your responsibilities. Some of the best experiences I've had in my life have been enhanced with drugs.

But, they must be consumed responsibly. I have no idea what fentanyl is all about, though. Never tried it.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
One person can smuggle in a million doses of fentanyl. A giant force field bubble wouldn't be enough to prevent it from coming in.
Time to hit up Mexico. Again. Cut the source.

I know just the guy.

giphy.gif


I dont understand how China with their insane government control is allowing this stuff to be manufactured there.
 
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highrider

Banned
USA has 2000 miles of land frontier with México, 5000 miles of land frontier with Canada and almost 100.000 miles of coast.

The War On Drugs was declared by Nixon in 1971. Since then there’s been multiple republican and democrat presidents and the flow of drugs has never stopped.

Yes there’s no difference at all the drug trafficking today as opposed to the 70s, 80s and 90s. It’s exactly the same in every way. I realize it’s advantageous to view the border as an impossible problem if you think it’s fine, but countries do manage to control borders daily. Mexico for example 😂
 
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Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
Yes there’s no difference at all the drug trafficking today as opposed to the 70s, 80s and 90s. It’s exactly the same in every way. I realize it’s advantageous to view the border as an impossible problem if you think it’s fine, but countries do manage to control borders daily. Mexico for example 😂

It is an impossible problem for a country like the US with over 100.000 miles of border.

The only way to fix the problem is to curb demand.
 

nush

Gold Member
I dont understand how China with their insane government control is allowing this stuff to be manufactured there.

Bootleg versions of fentanyl are often made by drug cartels in Mexico with chemicals from China

It's banned in China, but obviously people find a way around it.



I've been to places in China that trade in CBD, unless someone talks or is careless in digital communication they'd never be discovered.
 

QSD

Member

"
The U.S. recorded its highest number of drug-overdose deaths in a 12-month period, eclipsing 100,000 for the first time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There were an estimated 100,306 drug deaths in the 12 months running through April, the latest CDC data show. This marks a nearly 29% rise from the deaths recorded in the same period a year earlier, indicating the U.S. is heading for another full-year record after drug deaths soared during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It’s telling us that 2021 looks like it will be worse than 2020,” said Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

Opioid-related deaths, mainly fueled by the potent drug fentanyl, accounted for about three quarters of the deaths through April, according to the CDC, which counts provisional drug deaths in yearlong blocks. These records take months to compile because drug overdoses typically require local death investigations and toxicology tests.

Fentanyl has for years been a major catalyst in an intensifying U.S. overdose crisis. The nation was reporting fewer than 50,000 fatal overdoses as recently as 2014. In 2020, the number surged to a record of about 93,330.

The pandemic intensified opioid problems in many ways, from increasing isolation among people trying to maintain their sobriety to complicating treatment, according to advocates for drug users and those in recovery. The pandemic has also been a major draw on resources and attention for public health authorities, who are still trying to manage Covid-19.

Bootleg versions of fentanyl are often made by drug cartels in Mexico with chemicals from China, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. While fentanyl hit hard in places like New England, Appalachian and Midwest states several years ago, the drug is a fast-growing problem in western parts of the U.S. now, too. The DEA recently warned of a proliferation in fake pills containing fentanyl.

Fentanyl-related deaths are soaring in the Las Vegas area, where the Southern Nevada Health District has recorded 160 deaths with the drug through August this year. This puts the region on pace to potentially surpass the 193 fentanyl deaths seen last year, said Brandon Delise, an epidemiologist with the health district.
"
This is indeed the stuff of nightmares. IIRC the pharma companies that started this disaster still publicly deny *any* wrongdoing, while backhandedly offering 'compensation payments'. A lot of the paranoia that feeds into the current anti-vaxx movement started here, with pharma companies obfuscating and downplaying evidence for addiction potential, FDA looking away, and the medical establishment in general not acting to put an end to these 'pain clinics'
 

Aesius

Member
This is indeed the stuff of nightmares. IIRC the pharma companies that started this disaster still publicly deny *any* wrongdoing, while backhandedly offering 'compensation payments'. A lot of the paranoia that feeds into the current anti-vaxx movement started here, with pharma companies obfuscating and downplaying evidence for addiction potential, FDA looking away, and the medical establishment in general not acting to put an end to these 'pain clinics'
Big Pharma's misdeeds go far beyond the opioid crisis, unfortunately.
 

Sub_Level

wants to fuck an Asian grill.
It’s estimated that 80% of it comes across the southern border.

Correct, most circulated fentanyl it is actually produced in Mexico unlike say cocaine. I'm pointing out that 90% of seizures happen at POEs (11,000 pounds last year per the CBP website). That doesn't mean 90% of the product is shipped through POEs, but its beyond clear that a substantial amount is.

I think folks often underestimate the volume of international commerce, distribution, and travel that happens between US and Mexico. The border was only just recently opened back up to non-essential mexicans, and we still ended up with all this crap coming into the country & a substantial increase of seizures in 2020 vs 2019.
 

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Resident Cheap Arse
Time to hit up Mexico. Again. Cut the source.

I know just the guy.

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I dont understand how China with their insane government control is allowing this stuff to be manufactured there.

Slightly OT, but I really hate the way he fires the gun in that scene. Awkward, looks ridiculous and you can see the gun rocking all over the place as he hits the trigger so even at close range it looks like he's missing more than he hits. Even the fake muzzle flash can't keep up.
 
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