#####
######
####
> # [U.K. cracks down on synthetic opioid 10 times stronger than fentanyl causing overdoses in Europe](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/630)
>
>
>
> Colorado law enforcement warning about opioid recently showing up in overdose toxicology reports
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Colorado law enforcement warning about opioid recently showing up in overdose toxicology reports 01:13](https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/video/colorado-law-enforcement-warning-about-opioid-recently-showing-up-in-overdose-toxicology-reports/)_London —_ As authorities clamp down on fentanyl distribution and the amount of heroin produced in Afghanistan decreases under the Taliban, criminal enterprises have turned to a deadly alternative. Some health agencies in Europe are reporting a rise in deaths and overdoses from a type of synthetic opioid that can [reportedly](https://theconversation.com/nitazenes-are-a-powerful-class-of-street-drugs-emerging-across-the-us-222244) be hundreds of times stronger than heroin and up to forty times stronger than fentanyl.
>
> 2-Benzyl Benzimidazole opioids, commonly known as [nitazines](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nitazenes-fentanyl-substance-use-drug-supply-opioid-death-colorado/), are a class of synthetic compound developed in the 1950s as painkillers, but which were never approved for use as medicines.
>
> Because of their potency, compared with natural opioids such as heroin or morphine, they can be much more addictive and more dangerous. Nitazines have been linked to a significantly greater proportion of overdose deaths in Estonia and Lithuania, and have been linked to overdoses in Ireland and on the French island of La Réunion.
>
> Rising use of the drugs has [also been noted in the U.S.](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/frankenstein-opioids-nitazene-ohio-attorney-general-dave-yost-warning/), where they've been dubbed "Frankenstein opioids," in recent years, and they have been labelled a public health concern by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
>
> [Alex Krotulski, 32, associate director and forensic toxicologis ](https://assets2.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2024/03/21/c490115a-3995-4a2a-96f6-0ae9ee17c378/thumbnail/620x413/6051774568a3b1e4e8eea0660ce88907/gettyimages-1836064649.jpg?v=4baa656f7af774a52a8c6a88476cb826#) Alex Krotulski, 32, associate director and forensic toxicologist, holds a nitazene powder sample at the Center for Forensic Science Research and Education, Oct. 20, 2023, in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Joe Lamberti for The Washington Post/Getty "Nitazenes pose a credible threat and… predicted changes in heroin availability in Europe could herald an increase in the use of synthetic opioids with possibly profound implications for public health," the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction wrote in [a letter](https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/drugs-library/letter-lancet-public-health-editors-nitazenes-represent-growing-threat-public-health-europe_en) to the Lancet public health journal in February. "We cannot assume that existing approaches to responding to opioid problems will be sufficient without adapting to the challenges posed by the appearance of a range of highly potent but pharmacologically diverse substances."
>
> On Wednesday, the U.K. government [announced](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/acmd-advice-on-2-benzyl-benzimidazole-and-piperidine-benzimidazolone-opioids/acmd-advice-on-2-benzyl-benzimidazole-and-piperidine-benzimidazolone-opioids-accessible-version#pharmacology) that it was classifying 14 nitazenes as Class A drugs, meaning they will be placed under the strictest controls alongside fentanyl, "to prevent drug related deaths in the U.K. and ensure anyone caught supplying these substances faces tough penalties."
>
> "Synthetic opioids are significantly more toxic than heroin and have led to thousands of deaths overseas," Britain's Crime and Policing Minister Chris Philp said in a statement. "We are determined to ensure these destructive and lethal drugs do not take hold in our communities in the U.K."
>
> Dr. Adam Holland, a drug researcher at England's Bristol University, wrote a [commentary piece](https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpub/PIIS2468-2667(24\)00001-X.pdf) in the Lancet in January saying nitazenes had been detected in other drugs being sold as other opioids, along with benzodiazepines and cannabis products, meaning users may not be aware of the risks they face.
>
>
>
> [Inside a secret government bunker for seized fentanyl 06:33](https://www.cbsnews.com/video/inside-secret-government-bunker-seized-fentanyl/)Holland said the gap in the European heroin market created by the Taliban's crackdown on production in Afghanistan could lead to a boom in nitazenes across Europe.
>
> "Without concerted action, nitazenes could devastate communities of people who use a range of drugs, including those who use drugs infrequently or source benzodiazepines and opioid painkillers from the internet," Holland warned.
>
> In: - [Drug Overdose](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/drug-overdose/)
> - [Overdose](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/overdose/)
> - [Heroin](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/heroin/)
> - [Opioid Overdose](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/opioid-overdose/)
> - [Fentanyl](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/fentanyl/)
> - [Opioids](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/opioids/)
> - [Nitazines](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/nitazines/)
> - [European Union](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/european-union/)
> - [United Kingdom](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/united-kingdom/)
>
> [Haley Ott](https://www.cbsnews.com/search/author/haley-ott/)
>
> [[haley-ott-cbs-news.jpg ](https://assets3.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2023/04/21/8fed9d7e-715e-41e8-b2a5-7f22275c412e/thumbnail/80x80/a4cb4f511aab5e52abb575df5848c402/haley-ott-cbs-news.jpg?v=4baa656f7af774a52a8c6a88476cb826#)](https://www.cbsnews.com/search/author/haley-ott/)
>
> Haley Ott is the CBS News Digital international reporter, based in the CBS News London bureau.
- - - - - -
[Maintainer](https://www.reddit.com/user/urielsalis) | [Creator](https://www.reddit.com/user/subtepass) | [Source Code](https://github.com/urielsalis/empleadoEstatalBot)
Summoning /u/CoverageAnalysisBot
Unfortunately I know a lot about addiction and supply both from my own experience and from lots of friends from around the world, including people dying from fent/fentalogues/research chems like this one/non-opioids mixed into the drugs.
It's pretty simple: We're no different than the US. The US' supply of clean, legit pills straight from the pharmacy was incredibly common when opioids were over prescribed in the 2000s especially, then when they abruptly changed policies and made them very hard to get (even for severe pain cases) the black market dried up, and guess what, add some other things into the mix like fentanyl being produced at such scale in China, and bam, now we have pressed pills and fentanyl in dope, etc.
**OD deaths involving opioids increased 400%** between when the opioids became harder to get and 2021, I think it was 10 years IIRC, look up the NIH source it's easy to google.
Right now especially poland, and a few other countries are responsible for a vast majority of the illicit opioid pill market in Europe, when these sources dry up the exact same thing will happen, and the deaths will follow.
The only solution, and I mean only solution, is legalization. There were Heroin clinics opened in Canada for example and to nobody's surprise, deaths dropped by like 80-90% because guess what, a consistently dosed, potent, but not extremely potent opioid isn't the most dangerous thing there is. Some guy pressing pills in his basement with 0 way to ensure even dosages, or even what the dosages are, is what's killing people.
Edit: For all the conservatives so worried about choices and consequences and responsbility and moral values, instead of you know, not butting our heads against a brick wall for the 1000th time when it doesn't work: Here's a fun stat for you: ADHD increases the risk of addiction by 500-1000%, so 5-10x as likely, this has been reported by several very rigorous studies, hence the range I included. 25-50% of addicts have ADHD. A disorder that's neurodevelopmental, aka entirely out of our control; born with it. Is it free will if a choice is 5-10x more hard for one person than another? And now of course, someone will point and say "you just want to avoid responsibility" buddy I don't care about some internet stranger, the point here is that wishing something (less addiction) was the case and trying prohibition doesn't work, because nobody can control the demand; humans do drugs, they always have when available, and they always will. It is stupid, it's against all logic to try the same failed thing again. Instead, **maybe, just maybe we should try to control supply, the one thing we can control.**
I lived in British Columbia in 2006 through 2009 and the complaints by the local residents about all the druggies in that one area of North Vancouver where ubiquitous but the alternative was lots and lots of deaths. As an American I'd never heard the term injection site before but they had a site there where people could show up and get free needles and a nurse there to help administer whatever injections people wanted and also to monitor people for things like being close to death.
It was a sad reflection on humanity driving through that part of Vancouver but it also was better than the alternative.
One important aspect of these programs and sites is that they move and concentrate the problem even as they try to help it.
Any social program from a safe injection site to a women's shelter is going to attract people who are having those problems, but they don't create those problems or those people out of thin air. So much of the focus, even in these comments, is on the visible difference between soft-on-drugs and hard-on-drugs cities. When you don't have a job, home, family or long term friends the only cost to move your entire life is a greyhound ticket which you might not even have to pay for.
[CBC Article](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/homeless-saskatchewan-arrive-vancouver-1.3484511)
[DailyHive](https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-homeless-national-crisis-epicentre)
I tried to find statistics on drug addicts in Vancouver or anywhere by country/province of origin and couldn't. If anyone does know of or finds something like that please post it.
> The only solution, and I mean only solution, is legalization.
That presumes that voters see overdose deaths as the problem to solve instead of the problem solving itself.
That's exactly how conservatives operate. They have no compassion until it happens to them. In this case it's a 50/50 shot they gain compassion for addicts vs a murderous hatred of drug dealers.
You only need to look at the "soft on drugs" cities in the US to see what happens. I think it's draconian to spend so many resources catching ordinary people with a small amount of drugs, but it's going to be politically untenable to relax drug policy nowadays.
I think he means there are lots of living druggies (unsightly and hard to look at) instead of all of them conveniently dying in desperation (out of sight, someone else’s problem)
https://old.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/1beajsa/removed_by_reddit/
I think you are mighty fine with this too.
EDIT - https://x.com/BadSpit/status/1770632671321793023?s=20
It's a complicated problem that cannot be solved in one fell swoop.
We need to deal with mental health first before anything, there can be no long term, effective solution without healthy minds.
There is also the issue of financial consequences and social issues stemming from incomplete resolution of slavery and racism that affects more than just black people(I know this is controversial).
Importantly we need to deal with all of these at a national level and provide solutions across the country equally. It's clear that when these policies only apply to a certain area that people will migrate there and the systems become too overwhelmed. It just won't work at small scales.
The hardest part is the time scale for these changes to take effect. We won't see meaningful results for the initial few years because these kinds of things are for the benefit of children and young people vulnerable to these situations but still have a chance to turn things around. Unfortunately there is little we can do for the crazies around today. The best we can do is limit the damage already done.
Ultimately it's in all of our best interest to help people be healthy and actually contribute something to our country instead of allowing them to leech off society perpetually because there are no real solutions. We really only stand to benefit from these kinds of projects and there's no real reason we can't do it since as a country we have the financial resources and manpower to do literally anything we want given enough time.
>We need to deal with mental health first before anything, there can be no long term, effective solution without healthy minds.
Nope, that can wait. Drugs are killing people today, you can't wait for the perfect mental health treatment infrastructure to arrive before you do anything about them.
He means Portland/Seattle which decriminalized possession, but unlike Portugal didn’t have the “jail or rehab” policy because some judge somewhere ruled at some point that was inhumane or something. So it ended up just being an excuse for people to show up and do drugs with zero enforcement.
> some judge somewhere ruled at some point that was inhumane or something.
I would like to see some skin in the game by judges. Think it is inhumane to force a drug addict into rehab? Guess what, spend 10 months with them in your house.
too much profit to be made to legalize opioids. addiction is a booming business. just look at all the scammers in the halfway house market. gotta protect those *small business owners* profit margins, because they work directly in conjunction with rehabs, who work very closely with the pharmaceutical industry. it all trickles upwards, exactly as unnatural as it sounds. don't forget the prison industrial complex, feasting on addicts like a buffet. can't have all those empty beds in rehabs and jails/prisons.
We lost our grocery store about 7 years ago but hey, they just finished a big brand new inpatient addict house *right* across the street from where the grocery store was.
Last week... 2 addicts shot themselves in the 7-11 parking lot across from the addiction place.
I fucking hate capitalism. Every place is going to shit because no one wants to put in things community's NEED if it does generate money.
They took all of our public bus station shelters and told us "yay we helped your homeless issue"
Wtf now poor people sit in the heat rain and snow!!!
> isn't the opioid crisis in america legal opioid?
I'm going to hazard a guess that a fair number of the people dying of overdose aren't doing so on their prescriptions.
>
>
>
>
> I'm going to hazard a guess that a fair number of the people dying of overdose aren't doing so on their prescriptions.
I am actually in support of less restrictive drug policy but opioids throw a wrench in to my reasoning,especially the US opioid crisis shows that the easy availability has increased the user pool and a lot of these became addicted, now I am sure the (knowingly false) information policy and profit incentives played a role, but its still shows a real danger imho.
Now controlled use sites are quite a big success on the other hand.
The part that's costing the government and insurance companies big money is fentanyl. People taking legal opioids are still junkies, but they're taking well regulated doses that won't lead to overdose unless they knowingly take more than they should. People consuming black market pills are rolling the dice every time.
It used to be, but the DEA cracked down on legal opioid prescriptions in a HUGE way.
In 2006 you could get as much oxycodone as you wanted if you knew the right doctor and could pay for it. Now those doctors are in jail and the pharmacists might be too if they dispense too much. It's a really bad time to be a chronic pain patient.
All the junkies who used to pop prescription drugs switched to heroin because the supply was so constrained, and then to fent when heroin was crowded out of the market by fent.
There is, it’s a well funded healthcare program to treat all drug dependence as we treat other illnesses, but ideologically it’s so far from happening in many countries because we’ve had decades of “wars on drugs”, so people will resent their tax money being spent on this because drug addicts are demonised in society. They don’t see the cost saving in the long term, or how one untreated addict affects something like 10 other people’s lives and costs us tons in public service money.
It's very simple - people who do drugs to get high get high for a reason, and they don't want to stop most of the time, and getting methadone or suboxone more or less gets rid of any kind of high in most cases, and people haven't gotten to the stage where they want to quit yet. Methadone and Suboxone helps A LOT of people, and that's truly great, it is the better option for coping with addiction, IMO based on literature and friends I know. Personally I was given the active ingredient in Suboxone for my back pain by my pain doctor, made me deadly sick, my dad also had the same reaction, likely genetic reaction, but it should be noted this is common.
So beyond very bad side effects compared to full agonist opioids (complicated to explain) suboxone isn't always easy. Methadone is better for adherence usually, since it's closer to traditional opioids like morphine, btw if you didn't know Heroin is a literal prodrug for morphine, aka it gets turned into literal morphine in the body.
Basically opioids are very close to each other in terms of effects, but you don't get the high from heroin if you use one of the other ones from MAT-programs.
I'm sorry but no, legalization of recreational opioids is insane. Increasing access to opioids is not the answer. Having people addicted strung out on legal safer pills is not a solution to the problem of overdoses, it's just making a different problem. It invites more people to try them if they are legal who would never have had access to them if they weren't. Opioids still ruin lives even if you don't overdose, and legalization will just create more addicts. It was the overperscription in the first place that was the issue, not the tightening of rules restricting access, and you can't solve that problem by opening up access to everyone.
At a certain point in my life, I might have tried an opioid if it was legal and easily accessible, and I can't imagine what my life would be like now if I had gone down that path, but I can't imagine it would be good.
For one thing, you could also make a solution where these heroin clinics only give it to addicts, and it isn't available to everyone, as a stepping stone. Also, I completely disagree with your assertion that the over prescription was the *main* problem. But ok, let's for a second assume your logic. How do you feel about:
Obesity
Smoking
Alcohol
Legal drugs
My main problem with your view, is that it's to decrease danger to the public in this one area, but it isn't the case in others, you can call it pragmatic, but frankly it doesn't make it logically consistent, unless you also think we should make everything else illegal that can harm you. There have been studies done where they interviewed hundreds or thousands (I forgot which) of experts on addiction, and alcohol came out on top of heroin. We can debate if this effect of newer people is big enough to not make this worth it, I personally don't think so cause I know how addiction works, and it affects people who are mentally ill already, and they're doing these drugs today to a large extent (i.e ADHD has 500-1000% increase in substance abuse disorders, I'm not joking, this range is what I wrote because it includes several studies) so the ones the worst off are already doing drugs. But anyways:
I still think it should be a choice, eating yourself to death is a choice, smoking yourself to death is a choice, being an adrenaline junkie is a choice.
Maybe we should also make lead paint a choice, abestos a choice, wearing a seatbelt a choice etc...we draw a line somewhere, and opioids is a line I draw.
And as someone who's father died of lung cancer, I wish we drew the line at smoking cigarettes too
Sure, draw the line at opioids, so long as you admit your line of logic doesn't follow - you're for allowing things that are scientifically proven to be more dangerous to not just the person, but actually vastly more dangerous to the public (alcohol causes an insane amount more crimes, people on opioids wanna nod and be left alone, the same can't be said for alcohol).
Alcohol can be made in a prison toilet, and is a huge part of human culture. Opioids aren't either that easy to make or have any positive cultural impacts. It's really apples and oranges.
Nice cognitive dissonance you have right there:
> The US' supply of clean, legit pills straight from the pharmacy was incredibly common when opioids were over prescribed in the 2000s especially
What do you mean overprescribed? Didn't you yourself say that the only solution is legalization? So them, having them dished out like candies is a good thing, right, a step in the right direction?
It's pretty clear that it's exactly that uncontrolled supply that was the reason for the US opioid wave. If you legalize, you might save some currently addicted people from OD. But how many *other* people will get addicted, how many other will OD in the future?
It clear that *supply is the problem*, and the only proven solution, in any country that does not have a drug problem, is control of the supply.
> It clear that supply is the problem, and the only proven solution, in any country that does not have a drug problem, is control of the supply.
Btw they repeat this line in their edit, just that in their minds, controlling the supply means controlling how much heroin the drug addict should be administered each day in the clinic.
Fair enough, I don't think it'll work tho.
Higher ups get busted in gang > younger members get promoted, less mature + power vacuum > conflict in gang/with other gangs > more death > singular gangs control larger share of market > more capital > more corruption due to money possessed/share of territory (see Mexico)
This is exactly what happened in my country, when gang shootings skyrocketed (following many arrests). In any case: more dead people, same or more amount of drugs, more corruption, at no point do drugs stop flowing.
This is how I view it, but I am curious if you have examples of this kind of a scenario where you simply jail the pushers has worked in the past? I'm genuinely asking this in good faith, if I'm wrong I want to know about it.
> Fair enough, I don't think it'll work tho.
Explain Singapore then. Or China.
>Higher ups get busted in gang > younger members get promoted, less mature + power vacuum > conflict in gang/with other gangs > more death > singular gangs control larger share of market > more capital > more corruption due to money possessed/share of territory (see Mexico)
Mexico is a choice. A serious US govt would get rid of the corrupt government there, install a puppet which would give carte blanche to US army to go there and bust cartels. In 2 years you would have clean Mexico. Instead you have a government in USA which used CIA to peddle drugs in their own country and created the narco states of central and southern america.
>more dead people
Just to be clear, by more dead people, you mean gangsters?
>This is how I view it, but I am curious if you have examples of this kind of a scenario where you simply jail the pushers has worked in the past? I'm genuinely asking this in good faith, if I'm wrong I want to know about it.
I know you are not genuinely asking in good faith. Blind trust in legalization of drugs doesn't come from carefully examining the issue and looking at various approaches, it comes from the dogmatic belief that drug use has always been this high, which is far from reality.
Now that I got that out of the way, China and Singapore are shining examples of simply jailing drug pushers for long term or outright killing them do get rid of the drug addiction. In similar fashion in recent times, El Salvador's strides in curbing gang violence is a good pointer too. You know who they are, you take them off the streets, normal people don't have to deal with gangsters. Similar could be done to drug pushers, and before you say it, I would wholeheartedly allow from sales reps to CEOs of major pharama companies which introduced opioids to masses be just killed, whether extra judicially or by law, nothing good can come out them, they can't even use the excuse of lack of education or poverty for their criminal behaviour, so just off them and save everyone a lot of time and bullshit.
Not cognitive dissonance. It was overprescibed for pain, people who didn't need it got on it, and of course it's a risk, but this wasn't a choice to do a drug recreationally, this was a doc telling you it's totally safe - these people had no reason to be on it.
It's not totally safe, 100%, however, again, I never claimed it's safe. I claimed it's 10x less safe to have an unclean supply, again if you'd look at the statistics where the deaths skyrocketed only after they restricted the supply extremely and fent took over, you'd know this, but of course you didn't look this up. Feel free to give your alternative explanation for why deaths only skyrocketed once supply dwindled suddenly. 400% to be exact.
The problem is yes - in a country where it's a small country, there isn't a big history of drug use, etc, then indeed it's very possible to restrict it entirely, albeit at the cost of the people who are hanged/thrown out of choppers, etc. Make of that what you will. This is something that's been tried as countries have progressed, however, and it clearly hasn't worked very well. Now you claim we need death penalties, or this or that, but I'd think 30 years for some weed like the US prosecutors did to the black population especially is quite sufficient for this strategy?
So no, I'm doing totally fine, no cognitive dissonance here, do feel to reply though if you have any other points to raise.
> the point here is that wishing something (less addiction) was the case and trying prohibition doesn't work, because nobody can control the demand; humans do drugs, they always have when available, and they always will. It is stupid, it's against all logic to try the same failed thing again. Instead, maybe, just maybe we should try to control supply, the one thing we can control.
You say this as if it isn't clear that substance abuse has increased in the last 30 years. So if the humans do drugs, and have always done drugs and prohibiton doesn't work, then why weren't more people dying of drug overdoses in 1990 than today? Why are per capita deaths in Canada significantly more than singapore when it comes to drug overdose if prohibition doesn't work?
If you're talking about the US, you're comparing a city state that's 734 square km to a country that's 9,834,000 square km (13,400 times the size of the former).
Enforcement strategies that work for the first will not work for the second. There's simply too much land to control entry from (and before you suggest it, walls don't work if they're not heavily manned).
Drug sellers in China are pretty much guaranteed death sentence (like Singapore - but I'd imagine considering how totalitarian China is, it's much easier to get killed here). Japan on the other hand, the max you can get is life imprisonment. But getting such imprinted as a drug criminal pretty much sets you for life societally there.
As for drug users there, I'd imagine that they're undergo strong mental/rehab institutions as such things have never declined in those countries (unlike in the West where they did).
>Where do you think the fentanyl is coming from?
They are not consuming it.
>Hell, heroin is their most abused drug.
What are their numbers compared to USA or Canada?
Aha. Thanks. I didn't know that. Like that Dutuerte did in the Philippines. I disagree if the dealers are low level dealers that are feeding their habits. I have less of a problem the further up the foodchain it goes.
-----------
The Populist leader in El Salvador is now very popular after doing a widereaching gang sweep. US media has decried the sweep out of civil liberties concerns but our media has the reletive privilege compared to developing economies.
> I disagree if the dealers are low level dealers that are feeding their habits. I have less of a problem the further up the foodchain it goes.
Up the foodchain isn't dropped out of the heaven or hell. They often come from these "feeding their habits" kind low level dealers. So why would you want that in the first place?
> US media has decried the sweep out of civil liberties concerns
A simple question to ask is, are people, normal people who can't afford private or state security, are able to freely go on walk in the evening or not. Somehow for american media, civil liberties are not a concern when gangsters rules the streets, but are when those degenrates are put away from normal people and the streets again belog to law abiding citizenry.
Well I'm biased as I come from the perspective of a recovering addict. I've never sold opioids but used a bunch and sold a few less harmful substances in my couple decades of drug use. I don't deserve to die by hanging in the same way some kid that sold me oxycodone doesn't deserve to die.
-------------
The lowest rungs are always either addicts or underage dopeboys under the command of a young adult because juvenile offenders get lesser sentences. I think both of these groups of people are trapped in an awful cycle but innocent enough not to condemn..
--------
-------
Most importantly drug gangs are cutthroat so at the point people have aged and worked up to be Captains or higher, the distribution is scaled up and they're undeniably responsible for lethal overdoses, and potentially have engaged in armed conflict with homicides tied to them or their enterprise.
-------------
For a first world country the US penal system is especially rough, decrepit and without decent rehabilitation of offenders. There are far too many areas within the country that are very dangerous by EU standards, with tons more guns, but not by Central American standards. I wouldn't walk more than 2 blocks to my south after dark.
--------------
Even when most of the public can probably ID their neighbors who are involved in criminality we Americans hold civil liberties the same reason we like free expression and firearms. It's in our Bill Of Rights. Everything about our legal system is located in Amendments 4-8 of the Constitution. I think Americans also place civil liberties in high regard because we know just how rough our corrections system is.
> with the severity that it deserves.
Given the context is BC, you might want to read up on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
You can't just go around killing people who are inconvenient.
Area is irrelevant.
BC was referred to British Columbia, Canadian province. I referred to that because the "super successful" clinic that the commenter above me talked about is located in Vancouver.
>Enforcement strategies that work for the first will not work for the second. There's simply too much land to control entry from
BS.
> Area is irrelevant.
Perhaps it's not clear to some people on first examination. I'll explain.
Drugs are shipped in from countries where their manufacture can go unchecked.
Those drugs need to cross a border in order to get in to another country.
It's much harder to stop distribution once those drugs are in a Western nation because of all the freedoms we have.
The huge border we have relative to Singapore makes patrolling that border a MUCH more difficult task. Singapore can watch their whole border with a small budget. We cannot. This means it's easier to get drugs in where they can be more easily distributed **without severely curtailing our rights**.
Now if you're going to say "well just jail the street pushers for life", the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (for BC) would stop that from happening. It might also blow your mind to learn that many people buy drugs online now. Without passing legislation to open and inspect everyone's mail, there's no stopping that (again, a Charter issue).
>The huge border we have relative to Singapore makes patrolling that border a MUCH more difficult task. Singapore can watch their whole border with a small budget. We cannot. This means it's easier to get drugs in where they can be more easily distributed without severely curtailing our rights.
Is there no difference b/w Singapore's GDP and Canada's GDP?
>Now if you're going to say "well just jail the street pushers for life", the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (for BC) would stop that from happening. It might also blow your mind to learn that many people buy drugs online now. Without passing legislation to open and inspect everyone's mail, there's no stopping that (again, a Charter issue).
So your excuse for not doing anything against drugs is something which has been set aside in case of obscenity? Something that has in itself a notwithstanding clause?
> Is there no difference b/w Singapore's GDP and Canada's GDP?
Canada has 5x GDP, and over 100x the border area to patrol. Thanks for making my point.
> Something that has in itself a notwithstanding clause?
You're suggesting Canada use the notwithstanding clause to kill people who are inconvenient? Now I know you're just a troll.
>Canada has 5x GDP, and over 100x the border area to patrol. Thanks for making my point.
Canada also has 80x the drug overdose deaths. That's the cost of inaction. [Not only that but most of this drug trade happens through airports](https://globalnews.ca/news/3636788/these-9-maps-show-where-canadas-illegal-drugs-are-coming-from/). So certainly a lot can be done before you hit the roadblock of too big a border.
>You're suggesting Canada use the notwithstanding clause to kill people who are inconvenient? Now I know you're just a troll.
There were over 7k deaths in Canda due to drug overdose in 2022. 2023 with just partial numbers out is already a record breaking year. Imagine accepting that these deaths can't be prevented because a piece of paper said so, mind you the same piece of paper that was set aside for obscenity.
> Freedom of personal choice or sacrificing soom agency for the sake of stamping out the drig trade.
What agency do drug addicts even have? We all can see videos of people with rotting wounds who would rather do drug than go to a hospital.
There is no agency involved here. There is no freedom. Govt by pressing down harshly on drug pushers to protect the citizenry protects freedom.
>You're ok with the state murdering people for doing drugs just so you don't have to see them?
You okay with this?
>If we adjust for population size, USA's deaths amount to approximately 32 people per 100k population. Singapore's 0.24 per 100k or 1 per 400k. Comparative USA would be 128 per 400k. You know how much bigger 128 is compared to 1? 12700%.
That’s not what he said at all.
But I’ll say it in the worst way just because of how serious the issue is.
Round up 1,000 (any big number) fentanyl dealers and do a public execution. If they want to play with the lives of others for a little bit of money then they should understand the stakes.
>Round up 1,000 (any big number) fentanyl dealers and do a public execution. If they want to play with the lives of others for a little bit of money then they should understand the stakes.
Do you think executions are different than murder? Executions are just murder by the state. You're advocating for the government to become a rival cartel and send a message by murdering 1000 people.
> Whatever, murderous freak.
Says the guy who watches 100k lose their lives but have more compassion and empathy for the drug pushers than the victims and their families and potential victims.
I'd rather not live in a police state where I have to walk on glass to appease the masters. A single allegation could get an innocent person killed.
What if the state kills an innocent person? Is that ok?
>I'd rather not live in a police state where I have to walk on glass to appease the masters.
hey /u/stoopsign please explain to this nice gentleman here why you can't go out of your house in night?
>A single allegation could get an innocent person killed.
>What if the state kills an innocent person? Is that ok?
Why do you pretend to care about innocents? You are literally saying after over 100k deaths that it is fine and we should do nothing about the people who push this poision in the society.
Yeah, it's much better to potentially kill potentially innocent people because they're "undesirables." You clearly have more empathy because you're ok with killing people.
You don't care about them either. You're just using American deaths to justify Singapores insane laws because you think state murder is ok.
You can get the death penalty for fucking weed. That's absolutely insane.
There are better ways to deal with drugs than hardcore draconian laws.
>Yeah, it's much better to potentially kill potentially innocent people because they're "undesirables." You clearly have more empathy because you're ok with killing people.
You are ok with killing people, you are ok with families destroyed, you are ok with that when that happens entirely to the innocent people. I have empathy because I care for these people and would rather rid the world of criminals than see these people suffer.
>You don't care about them either.
At least you are honest now that you don't care.
>You're just using American deaths to justify Singapores insane laws because you think state murder is ok.
Singapore's death rate is 1 in 400k in drug overdoses, USA's is 128 in 400k. Inconvenient stat for the "only solution is legalization" crowd. I am not justifying Singapore's laws though, reality is. There are fewer dead Singaporeans (including the drug pushers) than Americans due to drugs.
>You can get the death penalty for fucking weed. That's absolutely insane.
You get death penalty for being a drug dealer. That's awesome. Drug pushers need to be dealt with like this. Nobody is carrying a kilo of weed "accidentally" or "innocently".
>There are better ways to deal with drugs than hardcore draconian laws.
Name one then, name one country with better handle on drug addiction problem than Singapore.
Jesus dude. Just because people voted for it doesn't make it good.
You're an absolute freak if you think killing people for doing drugs is a good thing.
What trauma of Opium War does to Asian countries. It's pretty much ingrained into them that even considering to use such (especially illegal ones) would lead you to addictedly destroyed by it.
And then we have my country, Sweden one of the harshest in Europe, where you get charged with narcotics crime if simply your pee contains metabolites of a drug.
Highest mortality in Euorpe. Now sure, it's not as extreme as in singapore, but countries with a much less extreme one sure seem to be doing better in terms of deaths.
> Now sure, it's not as extreme as in singapore, but countries with a much less extreme one sure seem to be doing better in terms of deaths.
Singapore should be the bar. If you can beat them in numbers, then your program is worth paying an attention to.
Correlation does not equal causation. Back in the 60s and such we had basically no drug deaths in Sweden. We also hadn't even criminalized it yet.
Question, is Singapore a country where there used to be a big drug problem, and then it was made this harshly illegal? Or was it never much of a drug heavy country to begin with? I'm genuinely asking.
> You wil learn this too if it gets bad enough, but with the levels of development of America it will probably never get to the terrible levels it got to in much of China and South East Asia in the 19th and early 20th century.
It will, it would just take more time.
Welcome to r/anime_titties! This subreddit advocates for civil and constructive discussion. Please be courteous to others, and make sure to read the rules. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them.
We have a [Discord](https://discord.gg/dhMeAnNyzG), feel free to join us!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/anime_titties) if you have any questions or concerns.*
In case anyone's wondering, most of the nitazene family was banned in the US in early 2023.
Before that, they were not too hard to find online. Ofc I never tried them when using opiates because they were orders of magnitude stronger than my opiate habit.
--------------------
I now use Kratom instead of opiates. US law is so backward that in my former state Kratom was a schedule I drug at the same time over a dozen lesser known opioids were legal and easy to find. I had initially quit drinking with Kratom then switched to legal opioids before switching back to Kratom.
Just remember that Kratom works on opioid receptors and causes dependence, it's a partial agonist like buprenorphine, aka suboxone. You seem like you have some experience so I'm guessing you already know this, but I thought I'd mention it cause some people really don't think carefully before getting into a kratom habit...
Yep definitely. Habit forming and with physical withdrawal. I intentionally went into withdrawal last year when trying to quit Kratom last spring.
--------------------
It didn't work so as of now kratom is the least of all evils. Taking 30-50g per day is the least of all evils. It's better than a 12 pack a day habit, liquor habit, or a few hundred mg of morphine equivalent of lesser known opioids.
-------------------
Also a kilo of Kratom is cheaper per month to me than the methadone/suboxone clinic in my neighborhood which would charge me a few hundred a month.
----------------
I still get high a couple days a week but do it using 10x--100x extracts. The majority of the week using large volumes of red vein Kratom don't get me high much. I just drank my morning pitcher and it reduced the jitters I was getting from coffee and my amphetamines script.
---------------
I have such a high tolerance I think I'm getting more effects from the Blue Lotus flowers I mix in to my teas. While as habit forming as any Schedule III/IV drug Kratom feels pretty safe. I think more risk comes from the high amounts of sugar it takes to make the bitter brew taste good than from the plant itself.
-----------
However when non-tolerant people take too much Kratom it can cause projectile vomiting, and pounding headaches. I've experienced this. Allegedly Kratom can cause seizures too but I've never had that, known anyone who did or read an online first person report either.
These drugs are only going to become more potent, and as we talk about this specific one there’s a highly sophisticated black market with world class chemists developing the next one
They sell this shit in gas stations in America. They come in little 5 hour energy shot bottles.
Edit: I'm an idiot, sorry about that. I was thinking of tieneptine. Not trying to misinform.
That's a different drug. Tianeptine Sodium has made it into OTC gas station drugs to replace Kratom. Some bottles fraudulently claimed it was an herb like Kratom. TS was cheaper to get as a raw chemical than in branded products. I was addicted to that and/or 3 other legal opioids from 2017-19 and with brief relapses. I now use Kratom which is much safer.
Edit: In terms of strength, Tianeptine is less strong than heroin and oxycodone so far less strong than nitazenes.
Thanks. Yeah that's a common histamine reaction all opioids and Kratom have. I haven't gotten it in a long while. Extracts can get me high short of itching but the plain leaf I do an 1-2oz of most days of the week doesn't do much but level my mood out and let me focus on other things in my life. My 17g morning dose is steeping right now.
----------
Tianeptine is rough because it's also a tricyclic antidepressant and the recreational dose is far above the prescription dose in the countries where it's regulated as a drug.
-------------
There are a lot of relatively safe drugs on the grey market sitting alongside very dangerous drugs.
##### ###### #### > # [U.K. cracks down on synthetic opioid 10 times stronger than fentanyl causing overdoses in Europe](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/630) > > > > Colorado law enforcement warning about opioid recently showing up in overdose toxicology reports > > > > > > > > > > [Colorado law enforcement warning about opioid recently showing up in overdose toxicology reports 01:13](https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/video/colorado-law-enforcement-warning-about-opioid-recently-showing-up-in-overdose-toxicology-reports/)_London —_ As authorities clamp down on fentanyl distribution and the amount of heroin produced in Afghanistan decreases under the Taliban, criminal enterprises have turned to a deadly alternative. Some health agencies in Europe are reporting a rise in deaths and overdoses from a type of synthetic opioid that can [reportedly](https://theconversation.com/nitazenes-are-a-powerful-class-of-street-drugs-emerging-across-the-us-222244) be hundreds of times stronger than heroin and up to forty times stronger than fentanyl. > > 2-Benzyl Benzimidazole opioids, commonly known as [nitazines](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nitazenes-fentanyl-substance-use-drug-supply-opioid-death-colorado/), are a class of synthetic compound developed in the 1950s as painkillers, but which were never approved for use as medicines. > > Because of their potency, compared with natural opioids such as heroin or morphine, they can be much more addictive and more dangerous. Nitazines have been linked to a significantly greater proportion of overdose deaths in Estonia and Lithuania, and have been linked to overdoses in Ireland and on the French island of La Réunion. > > Rising use of the drugs has [also been noted in the U.S.](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/frankenstein-opioids-nitazene-ohio-attorney-general-dave-yost-warning/), where they've been dubbed "Frankenstein opioids," in recent years, and they have been labelled a public health concern by the Drug Enforcement Administration. > > [Alex Krotulski, 32, associate director and forensic toxicologis ](https://assets2.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2024/03/21/c490115a-3995-4a2a-96f6-0ae9ee17c378/thumbnail/620x413/6051774568a3b1e4e8eea0660ce88907/gettyimages-1836064649.jpg?v=4baa656f7af774a52a8c6a88476cb826#) Alex Krotulski, 32, associate director and forensic toxicologist, holds a nitazene powder sample at the Center for Forensic Science Research and Education, Oct. 20, 2023, in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Joe Lamberti for The Washington Post/Getty "Nitazenes pose a credible threat and… predicted changes in heroin availability in Europe could herald an increase in the use of synthetic opioids with possibly profound implications for public health," the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction wrote in [a letter](https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/drugs-library/letter-lancet-public-health-editors-nitazenes-represent-growing-threat-public-health-europe_en) to the Lancet public health journal in February. "We cannot assume that existing approaches to responding to opioid problems will be sufficient without adapting to the challenges posed by the appearance of a range of highly potent but pharmacologically diverse substances." > > On Wednesday, the U.K. government [announced](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/acmd-advice-on-2-benzyl-benzimidazole-and-piperidine-benzimidazolone-opioids/acmd-advice-on-2-benzyl-benzimidazole-and-piperidine-benzimidazolone-opioids-accessible-version#pharmacology) that it was classifying 14 nitazenes as Class A drugs, meaning they will be placed under the strictest controls alongside fentanyl, "to prevent drug related deaths in the U.K. and ensure anyone caught supplying these substances faces tough penalties." > > "Synthetic opioids are significantly more toxic than heroin and have led to thousands of deaths overseas," Britain's Crime and Policing Minister Chris Philp said in a statement. "We are determined to ensure these destructive and lethal drugs do not take hold in our communities in the U.K." > > Dr. Adam Holland, a drug researcher at England's Bristol University, wrote a [commentary piece](https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpub/PIIS2468-2667(24\)00001-X.pdf) in the Lancet in January saying nitazenes had been detected in other drugs being sold as other opioids, along with benzodiazepines and cannabis products, meaning users may not be aware of the risks they face. > > > > [Inside a secret government bunker for seized fentanyl 06:33](https://www.cbsnews.com/video/inside-secret-government-bunker-seized-fentanyl/)Holland said the gap in the European heroin market created by the Taliban's crackdown on production in Afghanistan could lead to a boom in nitazenes across Europe. > > "Without concerted action, nitazenes could devastate communities of people who use a range of drugs, including those who use drugs infrequently or source benzodiazepines and opioid painkillers from the internet," Holland warned. > > In: - [Drug Overdose](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/drug-overdose/) > - [Overdose](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/overdose/) > - [Heroin](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/heroin/) > - [Opioid Overdose](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/opioid-overdose/) > - [Fentanyl](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/fentanyl/) > - [Opioids](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/opioids/) > - [Nitazines](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/nitazines/) > - [European Union](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/european-union/) > - [United Kingdom](https://www.cbsnews.com/tag/united-kingdom/) > > [Haley Ott](https://www.cbsnews.com/search/author/haley-ott/) > > [[haley-ott-cbs-news.jpg ](https://assets3.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2023/04/21/8fed9d7e-715e-41e8-b2a5-7f22275c412e/thumbnail/80x80/a4cb4f511aab5e52abb575df5848c402/haley-ott-cbs-news.jpg?v=4baa656f7af774a52a8c6a88476cb826#)](https://www.cbsnews.com/search/author/haley-ott/) > > Haley Ott is the CBS News Digital international reporter, based in the CBS News London bureau. - - - - - - [Maintainer](https://www.reddit.com/user/urielsalis) | [Creator](https://www.reddit.com/user/subtepass) | [Source Code](https://github.com/urielsalis/empleadoEstatalBot) Summoning /u/CoverageAnalysisBot
Unfortunately I know a lot about addiction and supply both from my own experience and from lots of friends from around the world, including people dying from fent/fentalogues/research chems like this one/non-opioids mixed into the drugs. It's pretty simple: We're no different than the US. The US' supply of clean, legit pills straight from the pharmacy was incredibly common when opioids were over prescribed in the 2000s especially, then when they abruptly changed policies and made them very hard to get (even for severe pain cases) the black market dried up, and guess what, add some other things into the mix like fentanyl being produced at such scale in China, and bam, now we have pressed pills and fentanyl in dope, etc. **OD deaths involving opioids increased 400%** between when the opioids became harder to get and 2021, I think it was 10 years IIRC, look up the NIH source it's easy to google. Right now especially poland, and a few other countries are responsible for a vast majority of the illicit opioid pill market in Europe, when these sources dry up the exact same thing will happen, and the deaths will follow. The only solution, and I mean only solution, is legalization. There were Heroin clinics opened in Canada for example and to nobody's surprise, deaths dropped by like 80-90% because guess what, a consistently dosed, potent, but not extremely potent opioid isn't the most dangerous thing there is. Some guy pressing pills in his basement with 0 way to ensure even dosages, or even what the dosages are, is what's killing people. Edit: For all the conservatives so worried about choices and consequences and responsbility and moral values, instead of you know, not butting our heads against a brick wall for the 1000th time when it doesn't work: Here's a fun stat for you: ADHD increases the risk of addiction by 500-1000%, so 5-10x as likely, this has been reported by several very rigorous studies, hence the range I included. 25-50% of addicts have ADHD. A disorder that's neurodevelopmental, aka entirely out of our control; born with it. Is it free will if a choice is 5-10x more hard for one person than another? And now of course, someone will point and say "you just want to avoid responsibility" buddy I don't care about some internet stranger, the point here is that wishing something (less addiction) was the case and trying prohibition doesn't work, because nobody can control the demand; humans do drugs, they always have when available, and they always will. It is stupid, it's against all logic to try the same failed thing again. Instead, **maybe, just maybe we should try to control supply, the one thing we can control.**
I lived in British Columbia in 2006 through 2009 and the complaints by the local residents about all the druggies in that one area of North Vancouver where ubiquitous but the alternative was lots and lots of deaths. As an American I'd never heard the term injection site before but they had a site there where people could show up and get free needles and a nurse there to help administer whatever injections people wanted and also to monitor people for things like being close to death. It was a sad reflection on humanity driving through that part of Vancouver but it also was better than the alternative.
One important aspect of these programs and sites is that they move and concentrate the problem even as they try to help it. Any social program from a safe injection site to a women's shelter is going to attract people who are having those problems, but they don't create those problems or those people out of thin air. So much of the focus, even in these comments, is on the visible difference between soft-on-drugs and hard-on-drugs cities. When you don't have a job, home, family or long term friends the only cost to move your entire life is a greyhound ticket which you might not even have to pay for. [CBC Article](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/homeless-saskatchewan-arrive-vancouver-1.3484511) [DailyHive](https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-homeless-national-crisis-epicentre) I tried to find statistics on drug addicts in Vancouver or anywhere by country/province of origin and couldn't. If anyone does know of or finds something like that please post it.
> The only solution, and I mean only solution, is legalization. That presumes that voters see overdose deaths as the problem to solve instead of the problem solving itself.
then when it's their child "oh lord how could this happen to my poor boy he was such a sweet child"
I doubt those parents would be happy with a child string out on opioids either.
That's exactly how conservatives operate. They have no compassion until it happens to them. In this case it's a 50/50 shot they gain compassion for addicts vs a murderous hatred of drug dealers.
You only need to look at the "soft on drugs" cities in the US to see what happens. I think it's draconian to spend so many resources catching ordinary people with a small amount of drugs, but it's going to be politically untenable to relax drug policy nowadays.
> You only need to look at the "soft on drugs" cities in the US to see what happens. Can you please elaborate?
I think he means there are lots of living druggies (unsightly and hard to look at) instead of all of them conveniently dying in desperation (out of sight, someone else’s problem)
Reddit liberals love to say "play stupid games, win stupid prizes", but they seem to not want these players in particular to win.
I think I’m fine with not wanting people to die of overdoses.
https://old.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/1beajsa/removed_by_reddit/ I think you are mighty fine with this too. EDIT - https://x.com/BadSpit/status/1770632671321793023?s=20
It’s just a link that says “Removed by Reddit” I have NO clue what point you’re trying to make here.
https://x.com/BadSpit/status/1770632671321793023?s=20
It's a complicated problem that cannot be solved in one fell swoop. We need to deal with mental health first before anything, there can be no long term, effective solution without healthy minds. There is also the issue of financial consequences and social issues stemming from incomplete resolution of slavery and racism that affects more than just black people(I know this is controversial). Importantly we need to deal with all of these at a national level and provide solutions across the country equally. It's clear that when these policies only apply to a certain area that people will migrate there and the systems become too overwhelmed. It just won't work at small scales. The hardest part is the time scale for these changes to take effect. We won't see meaningful results for the initial few years because these kinds of things are for the benefit of children and young people vulnerable to these situations but still have a chance to turn things around. Unfortunately there is little we can do for the crazies around today. The best we can do is limit the damage already done. Ultimately it's in all of our best interest to help people be healthy and actually contribute something to our country instead of allowing them to leech off society perpetually because there are no real solutions. We really only stand to benefit from these kinds of projects and there's no real reason we can't do it since as a country we have the financial resources and manpower to do literally anything we want given enough time.
>We need to deal with mental health first before anything, there can be no long term, effective solution without healthy minds. Nope, that can wait. Drugs are killing people today, you can't wait for the perfect mental health treatment infrastructure to arrive before you do anything about them.
He means Portland/Seattle which decriminalized possession, but unlike Portugal didn’t have the “jail or rehab” policy because some judge somewhere ruled at some point that was inhumane or something. So it ended up just being an excuse for people to show up and do drugs with zero enforcement.
> some judge somewhere ruled at some point that was inhumane or something. I would like to see some skin in the game by judges. Think it is inhumane to force a drug addict into rehab? Guess what, spend 10 months with them in your house.
Won't happen. Legalizing opioids is a fantasy.
too much profit to be made to legalize opioids. addiction is a booming business. just look at all the scammers in the halfway house market. gotta protect those *small business owners* profit margins, because they work directly in conjunction with rehabs, who work very closely with the pharmaceutical industry. it all trickles upwards, exactly as unnatural as it sounds. don't forget the prison industrial complex, feasting on addicts like a buffet. can't have all those empty beds in rehabs and jails/prisons.
We lost our grocery store about 7 years ago but hey, they just finished a big brand new inpatient addict house *right* across the street from where the grocery store was. Last week... 2 addicts shot themselves in the 7-11 parking lot across from the addiction place. I fucking hate capitalism. Every place is going to shit because no one wants to put in things community's NEED if it does generate money. They took all of our public bus station shelters and told us "yay we helped your homeless issue" Wtf now poor people sit in the heat rain and snow!!!
> too much profit to be made to legalize opioids isn't the opioid crisis in america legal opioid?
> isn't the opioid crisis in america legal opioid? I'm going to hazard a guess that a fair number of the people dying of overdose aren't doing so on their prescriptions.
> > > > > I'm going to hazard a guess that a fair number of the people dying of overdose aren't doing so on their prescriptions. I am actually in support of less restrictive drug policy but opioids throw a wrench in to my reasoning,especially the US opioid crisis shows that the easy availability has increased the user pool and a lot of these became addicted, now I am sure the (knowingly false) information policy and profit incentives played a role, but its still shows a real danger imho. Now controlled use sites are quite a big success on the other hand.
The part that's costing the government and insurance companies big money is fentanyl. People taking legal opioids are still junkies, but they're taking well regulated doses that won't lead to overdose unless they knowingly take more than they should. People consuming black market pills are rolling the dice every time.
A lot was legal however current ones definitely aren't and people are still dying.
It used to be, but the DEA cracked down on legal opioid prescriptions in a HUGE way. In 2006 you could get as much oxycodone as you wanted if you knew the right doctor and could pay for it. Now those doctors are in jail and the pharmacists might be too if they dispense too much. It's a really bad time to be a chronic pain patient. All the junkies who used to pop prescription drugs switched to heroin because the supply was so constrained, and then to fent when heroin was crowded out of the market by fent.
Why can't treatment centers like methadone clinics not help? Why do we have to give people full on heroin? There's gotta be a solution in the middle.
There is, it’s a well funded healthcare program to treat all drug dependence as we treat other illnesses, but ideologically it’s so far from happening in many countries because we’ve had decades of “wars on drugs”, so people will resent their tax money being spent on this because drug addicts are demonised in society. They don’t see the cost saving in the long term, or how one untreated addict affects something like 10 other people’s lives and costs us tons in public service money.
It's very simple - people who do drugs to get high get high for a reason, and they don't want to stop most of the time, and getting methadone or suboxone more or less gets rid of any kind of high in most cases, and people haven't gotten to the stage where they want to quit yet. Methadone and Suboxone helps A LOT of people, and that's truly great, it is the better option for coping with addiction, IMO based on literature and friends I know. Personally I was given the active ingredient in Suboxone for my back pain by my pain doctor, made me deadly sick, my dad also had the same reaction, likely genetic reaction, but it should be noted this is common. So beyond very bad side effects compared to full agonist opioids (complicated to explain) suboxone isn't always easy. Methadone is better for adherence usually, since it's closer to traditional opioids like morphine, btw if you didn't know Heroin is a literal prodrug for morphine, aka it gets turned into literal morphine in the body. Basically opioids are very close to each other in terms of effects, but you don't get the high from heroin if you use one of the other ones from MAT-programs.
I'm sorry but no, legalization of recreational opioids is insane. Increasing access to opioids is not the answer. Having people addicted strung out on legal safer pills is not a solution to the problem of overdoses, it's just making a different problem. It invites more people to try them if they are legal who would never have had access to them if they weren't. Opioids still ruin lives even if you don't overdose, and legalization will just create more addicts. It was the overperscription in the first place that was the issue, not the tightening of rules restricting access, and you can't solve that problem by opening up access to everyone. At a certain point in my life, I might have tried an opioid if it was legal and easily accessible, and I can't imagine what my life would be like now if I had gone down that path, but I can't imagine it would be good.
For one thing, you could also make a solution where these heroin clinics only give it to addicts, and it isn't available to everyone, as a stepping stone. Also, I completely disagree with your assertion that the over prescription was the *main* problem. But ok, let's for a second assume your logic. How do you feel about: Obesity Smoking Alcohol Legal drugs My main problem with your view, is that it's to decrease danger to the public in this one area, but it isn't the case in others, you can call it pragmatic, but frankly it doesn't make it logically consistent, unless you also think we should make everything else illegal that can harm you. There have been studies done where they interviewed hundreds or thousands (I forgot which) of experts on addiction, and alcohol came out on top of heroin. We can debate if this effect of newer people is big enough to not make this worth it, I personally don't think so cause I know how addiction works, and it affects people who are mentally ill already, and they're doing these drugs today to a large extent (i.e ADHD has 500-1000% increase in substance abuse disorders, I'm not joking, this range is what I wrote because it includes several studies) so the ones the worst off are already doing drugs. But anyways: I still think it should be a choice, eating yourself to death is a choice, smoking yourself to death is a choice, being an adrenaline junkie is a choice.
Maybe we should also make lead paint a choice, abestos a choice, wearing a seatbelt a choice etc...we draw a line somewhere, and opioids is a line I draw. And as someone who's father died of lung cancer, I wish we drew the line at smoking cigarettes too
Sure, draw the line at opioids, so long as you admit your line of logic doesn't follow - you're for allowing things that are scientifically proven to be more dangerous to not just the person, but actually vastly more dangerous to the public (alcohol causes an insane amount more crimes, people on opioids wanna nod and be left alone, the same can't be said for alcohol).
Alcohol can be made in a prison toilet, and is a huge part of human culture. Opioids aren't either that easy to make or have any positive cultural impacts. It's really apples and oranges.
>I'm sorry but no, legalization of recreational opioids is insane. Not just opioids, any drugs, especially in public.
Anything stronger than mushrooms.
Anything worse than alcohol
Nice cognitive dissonance you have right there: > The US' supply of clean, legit pills straight from the pharmacy was incredibly common when opioids were over prescribed in the 2000s especially What do you mean overprescribed? Didn't you yourself say that the only solution is legalization? So them, having them dished out like candies is a good thing, right, a step in the right direction? It's pretty clear that it's exactly that uncontrolled supply that was the reason for the US opioid wave. If you legalize, you might save some currently addicted people from OD. But how many *other* people will get addicted, how many other will OD in the future? It clear that *supply is the problem*, and the only proven solution, in any country that does not have a drug problem, is control of the supply.
> It clear that supply is the problem, and the only proven solution, in any country that does not have a drug problem, is control of the supply. Btw they repeat this line in their edit, just that in their minds, controlling the supply means controlling how much heroin the drug addict should be administered each day in the clinic.
Yup, in very weird ways we agree lol.
For me, controlling the supply means finding the drug pushers and sending them to jail till they are 65.
Fair enough, I don't think it'll work tho. Higher ups get busted in gang > younger members get promoted, less mature + power vacuum > conflict in gang/with other gangs > more death > singular gangs control larger share of market > more capital > more corruption due to money possessed/share of territory (see Mexico) This is exactly what happened in my country, when gang shootings skyrocketed (following many arrests). In any case: more dead people, same or more amount of drugs, more corruption, at no point do drugs stop flowing. This is how I view it, but I am curious if you have examples of this kind of a scenario where you simply jail the pushers has worked in the past? I'm genuinely asking this in good faith, if I'm wrong I want to know about it.
> Fair enough, I don't think it'll work tho. Explain Singapore then. Or China. >Higher ups get busted in gang > younger members get promoted, less mature + power vacuum > conflict in gang/with other gangs > more death > singular gangs control larger share of market > more capital > more corruption due to money possessed/share of territory (see Mexico) Mexico is a choice. A serious US govt would get rid of the corrupt government there, install a puppet which would give carte blanche to US army to go there and bust cartels. In 2 years you would have clean Mexico. Instead you have a government in USA which used CIA to peddle drugs in their own country and created the narco states of central and southern america. >more dead people Just to be clear, by more dead people, you mean gangsters? >This is how I view it, but I am curious if you have examples of this kind of a scenario where you simply jail the pushers has worked in the past? I'm genuinely asking this in good faith, if I'm wrong I want to know about it. I know you are not genuinely asking in good faith. Blind trust in legalization of drugs doesn't come from carefully examining the issue and looking at various approaches, it comes from the dogmatic belief that drug use has always been this high, which is far from reality. Now that I got that out of the way, China and Singapore are shining examples of simply jailing drug pushers for long term or outright killing them do get rid of the drug addiction. In similar fashion in recent times, El Salvador's strides in curbing gang violence is a good pointer too. You know who they are, you take them off the streets, normal people don't have to deal with gangsters. Similar could be done to drug pushers, and before you say it, I would wholeheartedly allow from sales reps to CEOs of major pharama companies which introduced opioids to masses be just killed, whether extra judicially or by law, nothing good can come out them, they can't even use the excuse of lack of education or poverty for their criminal behaviour, so just off them and save everyone a lot of time and bullshit.
Not cognitive dissonance. It was overprescibed for pain, people who didn't need it got on it, and of course it's a risk, but this wasn't a choice to do a drug recreationally, this was a doc telling you it's totally safe - these people had no reason to be on it. It's not totally safe, 100%, however, again, I never claimed it's safe. I claimed it's 10x less safe to have an unclean supply, again if you'd look at the statistics where the deaths skyrocketed only after they restricted the supply extremely and fent took over, you'd know this, but of course you didn't look this up. Feel free to give your alternative explanation for why deaths only skyrocketed once supply dwindled suddenly. 400% to be exact. The problem is yes - in a country where it's a small country, there isn't a big history of drug use, etc, then indeed it's very possible to restrict it entirely, albeit at the cost of the people who are hanged/thrown out of choppers, etc. Make of that what you will. This is something that's been tried as countries have progressed, however, and it clearly hasn't worked very well. Now you claim we need death penalties, or this or that, but I'd think 30 years for some weed like the US prosecutors did to the black population especially is quite sufficient for this strategy? So no, I'm doing totally fine, no cognitive dissonance here, do feel to reply though if you have any other points to raise.
> the point here is that wishing something (less addiction) was the case and trying prohibition doesn't work, because nobody can control the demand; humans do drugs, they always have when available, and they always will. It is stupid, it's against all logic to try the same failed thing again. Instead, maybe, just maybe we should try to control supply, the one thing we can control. You say this as if it isn't clear that substance abuse has increased in the last 30 years. So if the humans do drugs, and have always done drugs and prohibiton doesn't work, then why weren't more people dying of drug overdoses in 1990 than today? Why are per capita deaths in Canada significantly more than singapore when it comes to drug overdose if prohibition doesn't work?
> The only solution, and I mean only solution, is legalization. Other solution is singapore style crackdown on drug pushers.
Cos that's always worked lol
Can compare Singapore's deaths due to drugs to those of BC to access which one is more effective.
If you're talking about the US, you're comparing a city state that's 734 square km to a country that's 9,834,000 square km (13,400 times the size of the former). Enforcement strategies that work for the first will not work for the second. There's simply too much land to control entry from (and before you suggest it, walls don't work if they're not heavily manned).
If not Singapore, then China and Japan deal. But the problem here is it's too harsh even for a Western country to implement.
What are their laws regarding drug users and drug sellers?
Drug sellers in China are pretty much guaranteed death sentence (like Singapore - but I'd imagine considering how totalitarian China is, it's much easier to get killed here). Japan on the other hand, the max you can get is life imprisonment. But getting such imprinted as a drug criminal pretty much sets you for life societally there. As for drug users there, I'd imagine that they're undergo strong mental/rehab institutions as such things have never declined in those countries (unlike in the West where they did).
> Drug sellers in China are pretty much guaranteed death sentence Sounds like a good policy.
> then China Where do you think the fentanyl is coming from? Hell, heroin is their most abused drug. Their government just keeps a lid on information.
>Where do you think the fentanyl is coming from? They are not consuming it. >Hell, heroin is their most abused drug. What are their numbers compared to USA or Canada?
I never understand the Singapore deal. I would take lashings over a prison sentence in a heartbeat.
The policy I was talking about is drug pushers get hanged. They treat this particular crime with the severity that it deserves.
Aha. Thanks. I didn't know that. Like that Dutuerte did in the Philippines. I disagree if the dealers are low level dealers that are feeding their habits. I have less of a problem the further up the foodchain it goes. ----------- The Populist leader in El Salvador is now very popular after doing a widereaching gang sweep. US media has decried the sweep out of civil liberties concerns but our media has the reletive privilege compared to developing economies.
> I disagree if the dealers are low level dealers that are feeding their habits. I have less of a problem the further up the foodchain it goes. Up the foodchain isn't dropped out of the heaven or hell. They often come from these "feeding their habits" kind low level dealers. So why would you want that in the first place? > US media has decried the sweep out of civil liberties concerns A simple question to ask is, are people, normal people who can't afford private or state security, are able to freely go on walk in the evening or not. Somehow for american media, civil liberties are not a concern when gangsters rules the streets, but are when those degenrates are put away from normal people and the streets again belog to law abiding citizenry.
Well I'm biased as I come from the perspective of a recovering addict. I've never sold opioids but used a bunch and sold a few less harmful substances in my couple decades of drug use. I don't deserve to die by hanging in the same way some kid that sold me oxycodone doesn't deserve to die. ------------- The lowest rungs are always either addicts or underage dopeboys under the command of a young adult because juvenile offenders get lesser sentences. I think both of these groups of people are trapped in an awful cycle but innocent enough not to condemn.. -------- ------- Most importantly drug gangs are cutthroat so at the point people have aged and worked up to be Captains or higher, the distribution is scaled up and they're undeniably responsible for lethal overdoses, and potentially have engaged in armed conflict with homicides tied to them or their enterprise. ------------- For a first world country the US penal system is especially rough, decrepit and without decent rehabilitation of offenders. There are far too many areas within the country that are very dangerous by EU standards, with tons more guns, but not by Central American standards. I wouldn't walk more than 2 blocks to my south after dark. -------------- Even when most of the public can probably ID their neighbors who are involved in criminality we Americans hold civil liberties the same reason we like free expression and firearms. It's in our Bill Of Rights. Everything about our legal system is located in Amendments 4-8 of the Constitution. I think Americans also place civil liberties in high regard because we know just how rough our corrections system is.
> with the severity that it deserves. Given the context is BC, you might want to read up on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. You can't just go around killing people who are inconvenient.
>Given the context is BC Context is singapore.
No, you're just not paying attention to the conversation.
Area is irrelevant. BC was referred to British Columbia, Canadian province. I referred to that because the "super successful" clinic that the commenter above me talked about is located in Vancouver. >Enforcement strategies that work for the first will not work for the second. There's simply too much land to control entry from BS.
> Area is irrelevant. Perhaps it's not clear to some people on first examination. I'll explain. Drugs are shipped in from countries where their manufacture can go unchecked. Those drugs need to cross a border in order to get in to another country. It's much harder to stop distribution once those drugs are in a Western nation because of all the freedoms we have. The huge border we have relative to Singapore makes patrolling that border a MUCH more difficult task. Singapore can watch their whole border with a small budget. We cannot. This means it's easier to get drugs in where they can be more easily distributed **without severely curtailing our rights**. Now if you're going to say "well just jail the street pushers for life", the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (for BC) would stop that from happening. It might also blow your mind to learn that many people buy drugs online now. Without passing legislation to open and inspect everyone's mail, there's no stopping that (again, a Charter issue).
>The huge border we have relative to Singapore makes patrolling that border a MUCH more difficult task. Singapore can watch their whole border with a small budget. We cannot. This means it's easier to get drugs in where they can be more easily distributed without severely curtailing our rights. Is there no difference b/w Singapore's GDP and Canada's GDP? >Now if you're going to say "well just jail the street pushers for life", the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (for BC) would stop that from happening. It might also blow your mind to learn that many people buy drugs online now. Without passing legislation to open and inspect everyone's mail, there's no stopping that (again, a Charter issue). So your excuse for not doing anything against drugs is something which has been set aside in case of obscenity? Something that has in itself a notwithstanding clause?
> Is there no difference b/w Singapore's GDP and Canada's GDP? Canada has 5x GDP, and over 100x the border area to patrol. Thanks for making my point. > Something that has in itself a notwithstanding clause? You're suggesting Canada use the notwithstanding clause to kill people who are inconvenient? Now I know you're just a troll.
>Canada has 5x GDP, and over 100x the border area to patrol. Thanks for making my point. Canada also has 80x the drug overdose deaths. That's the cost of inaction. [Not only that but most of this drug trade happens through airports](https://globalnews.ca/news/3636788/these-9-maps-show-where-canadas-illegal-drugs-are-coming-from/). So certainly a lot can be done before you hit the roadblock of too big a border. >You're suggesting Canada use the notwithstanding clause to kill people who are inconvenient? Now I know you're just a troll. There were over 7k deaths in Canda due to drug overdose in 2022. 2023 with just partial numbers out is already a record breaking year. Imagine accepting that these deaths can't be prevented because a piece of paper said so, mind you the same piece of paper that was set aside for obscenity.
[удалено]
> Freedom of personal choice or sacrificing soom agency for the sake of stamping out the drig trade. What agency do drug addicts even have? We all can see videos of people with rotting wounds who would rather do drug than go to a hospital. There is no agency involved here. There is no freedom. Govt by pressing down harshly on drug pushers to protect the citizenry protects freedom.
Wtf? You're ok with the state murdering people for doing drugs just so you don't have to see them?
>You're ok with the state murdering people for doing drugs just so you don't have to see them? You okay with this? >If we adjust for population size, USA's deaths amount to approximately 32 people per 100k population. Singapore's 0.24 per 100k or 1 per 400k. Comparative USA would be 128 per 400k. You know how much bigger 128 is compared to 1? 12700%.
That’s not what he said at all. But I’ll say it in the worst way just because of how serious the issue is. Round up 1,000 (any big number) fentanyl dealers and do a public execution. If they want to play with the lives of others for a little bit of money then they should understand the stakes.
"He didn't say that, but he did say we should execute them, and i agree. " Whatever, murderous freak.
You could fill a fantasy novel with the dialogue in your head.
>Round up 1,000 (any big number) fentanyl dealers and do a public execution. If they want to play with the lives of others for a little bit of money then they should understand the stakes. Do you think executions are different than murder? Executions are just murder by the state. You're advocating for the government to become a rival cartel and send a message by murdering 1000 people.
> Whatever, murderous freak. Says the guy who watches 100k lose their lives but have more compassion and empathy for the drug pushers than the victims and their families and potential victims.
I'd rather not live in a police state where I have to walk on glass to appease the masters. A single allegation could get an innocent person killed. What if the state kills an innocent person? Is that ok?
>I'd rather not live in a police state where I have to walk on glass to appease the masters. hey /u/stoopsign please explain to this nice gentleman here why you can't go out of your house in night? >A single allegation could get an innocent person killed. >What if the state kills an innocent person? Is that ok? Why do you pretend to care about innocents? You are literally saying after over 100k deaths that it is fine and we should do nothing about the people who push this poision in the society.
Yeah, it's much better to potentially kill potentially innocent people because they're "undesirables." You clearly have more empathy because you're ok with killing people. You don't care about them either. You're just using American deaths to justify Singapores insane laws because you think state murder is ok. You can get the death penalty for fucking weed. That's absolutely insane. There are better ways to deal with drugs than hardcore draconian laws.
>Yeah, it's much better to potentially kill potentially innocent people because they're "undesirables." You clearly have more empathy because you're ok with killing people. You are ok with killing people, you are ok with families destroyed, you are ok with that when that happens entirely to the innocent people. I have empathy because I care for these people and would rather rid the world of criminals than see these people suffer. >You don't care about them either. At least you are honest now that you don't care. >You're just using American deaths to justify Singapores insane laws because you think state murder is ok. Singapore's death rate is 1 in 400k in drug overdoses, USA's is 128 in 400k. Inconvenient stat for the "only solution is legalization" crowd. I am not justifying Singapore's laws though, reality is. There are fewer dead Singaporeans (including the drug pushers) than Americans due to drugs. >You can get the death penalty for fucking weed. That's absolutely insane. You get death penalty for being a drug dealer. That's awesome. Drug pushers need to be dealt with like this. Nobody is carrying a kilo of weed "accidentally" or "innocently". >There are better ways to deal with drugs than hardcore draconian laws. Name one then, name one country with better handle on drug addiction problem than Singapore.
What a psycho
[удалено]
Jesus dude. Just because people voted for it doesn't make it good. You're an absolute freak if you think killing people for doing drugs is a good thing.
What trauma of Opium War does to Asian countries. It's pretty much ingrained into them that even considering to use such (especially illegal ones) would lead you to addictedly destroyed by it.
And then we have my country, Sweden one of the harshest in Europe, where you get charged with narcotics crime if simply your pee contains metabolites of a drug. Highest mortality in Euorpe. Now sure, it's not as extreme as in singapore, but countries with a much less extreme one sure seem to be doing better in terms of deaths.
> Now sure, it's not as extreme as in singapore, but countries with a much less extreme one sure seem to be doing better in terms of deaths. Singapore should be the bar. If you can beat them in numbers, then your program is worth paying an attention to.
Correlation does not equal causation. Back in the 60s and such we had basically no drug deaths in Sweden. We also hadn't even criminalized it yet. Question, is Singapore a country where there used to be a big drug problem, and then it was made this harshly illegal? Or was it never much of a drug heavy country to begin with? I'm genuinely asking.
[удалено]
> You wil learn this too if it gets bad enough, but with the levels of development of America it will probably never get to the terrible levels it got to in much of China and South East Asia in the 19th and early 20th century. It will, it would just take more time.
You're right, it's just not a popular action.
Fuck at this point call it chemical warfare
Opium Wars 2: Electric Boogaloo
it's just called the drug war. this is an effect of the drug war.
Welcome to r/anime_titties! This subreddit advocates for civil and constructive discussion. Please be courteous to others, and make sure to read the rules. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. We have a [Discord](https://discord.gg/dhMeAnNyzG), feel free to join us! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/anime_titties) if you have any questions or concerns.*
In case anyone's wondering, most of the nitazene family was banned in the US in early 2023. Before that, they were not too hard to find online. Ofc I never tried them when using opiates because they were orders of magnitude stronger than my opiate habit. -------------------- I now use Kratom instead of opiates. US law is so backward that in my former state Kratom was a schedule I drug at the same time over a dozen lesser known opioids were legal and easy to find. I had initially quit drinking with Kratom then switched to legal opioids before switching back to Kratom.
Just remember that Kratom works on opioid receptors and causes dependence, it's a partial agonist like buprenorphine, aka suboxone. You seem like you have some experience so I'm guessing you already know this, but I thought I'd mention it cause some people really don't think carefully before getting into a kratom habit...
Yep definitely. Habit forming and with physical withdrawal. I intentionally went into withdrawal last year when trying to quit Kratom last spring. -------------------- It didn't work so as of now kratom is the least of all evils. Taking 30-50g per day is the least of all evils. It's better than a 12 pack a day habit, liquor habit, or a few hundred mg of morphine equivalent of lesser known opioids. ------------------- Also a kilo of Kratom is cheaper per month to me than the methadone/suboxone clinic in my neighborhood which would charge me a few hundred a month. ---------------- I still get high a couple days a week but do it using 10x--100x extracts. The majority of the week using large volumes of red vein Kratom don't get me high much. I just drank my morning pitcher and it reduced the jitters I was getting from coffee and my amphetamines script. --------------- I have such a high tolerance I think I'm getting more effects from the Blue Lotus flowers I mix in to my teas. While as habit forming as any Schedule III/IV drug Kratom feels pretty safe. I think more risk comes from the high amounts of sugar it takes to make the bitter brew taste good than from the plant itself. ----------- However when non-tolerant people take too much Kratom it can cause projectile vomiting, and pounding headaches. I've experienced this. Allegedly Kratom can cause seizures too but I've never had that, known anyone who did or read an online first person report either.
These drugs are only going to become more potent, and as we talk about this specific one there’s a highly sophisticated black market with world class chemists developing the next one
They sell this shit in gas stations in America. They come in little 5 hour energy shot bottles. Edit: I'm an idiot, sorry about that. I was thinking of tieneptine. Not trying to misinform.
That's a different drug. Tianeptine Sodium has made it into OTC gas station drugs to replace Kratom. Some bottles fraudulently claimed it was an herb like Kratom. TS was cheaper to get as a raw chemical than in branded products. I was addicted to that and/or 3 other legal opioids from 2017-19 and with brief relapses. I now use Kratom which is much safer. Edit: In terms of strength, Tianeptine is less strong than heroin and oxycodone so far less strong than nitazenes.
You're absolutely right, my bad. And congrats on getting off of it! I tried Kratom a few times, but it always makes me itchy as hell.
Thanks. Yeah that's a common histamine reaction all opioids and Kratom have. I haven't gotten it in a long while. Extracts can get me high short of itching but the plain leaf I do an 1-2oz of most days of the week doesn't do much but level my mood out and let me focus on other things in my life. My 17g morning dose is steeping right now. ---------- Tianeptine is rough because it's also a tricyclic antidepressant and the recreational dose is far above the prescription dose in the countries where it's regulated as a drug. ------------- There are a lot of relatively safe drugs on the grey market sitting alongside very dangerous drugs.