I know this question is odd, but unfortunately we have a lot of unhoused addicted people in my city. I often see them sitting on a bench bent at the waist in half like a rag doll, or standing somewhere half bent over, like stooped over nodding out I guess? I don’t really know anything about substance use, but it’s such a strange sight, what substances cause them to bend over like this?
Poor souls. The mayors of big cities here have asked the provincial government to declare a state of emergency due to homelessness and addiction being so rampant, but Doug Ford doesn’t give a shit about them.
Sacklers. Just as the worst as cocaine cartels. Their properties should be expropriated to destroy fentanyl, and those bastards should be in supermax.
I’m actually pretty pissed off that people are trying to take fentanyl off the market completely. It needs to be a highly controlled substance but to take it away from the burn ICUs and hospice units is wildly inhumane.
Honestly, in my opinion, even the “illegal” use should be legal. I’m not a drug addict (besides caffeine), but I have a very progressive opinion of drugs. People are going to use them whether it’s legal or not. All that making it illegal does is pushes it into the shadows. Instead we should be providing education and testing, and helping people who choose (or have gotten stuck) using the drug to use it safely.
Fentanyl isn’t evil. It’s just a particularly strong opiate. It has the potential to at least be a cheaper option for people using opiates to self medicate, and, at least with testing kits, they could get whatever fix they want more safely. The biggest issue with fentanyl is that other drugs are laced with it, and you don’t know what, or how much, you’re getting.
Yah NIMBYs really don’t seem to understand that their neighborhood almost definitely already has a safe consumption site for one of the most addictive and dangerous drugs known to man. While opiate withdrawl can have fatal side effects, withdrawal from this drug can actually kill a person outright with nervous system dysfunction severe enough to cause seizures so severe and continuous that the person suffocates. And these locations actually distribute the drug in addition to supervising it’s use. We call them “bars.”
The supply of fentanyl out there isn’t coming from legitimate use. It’s all from overseas labs. So taking the legal stuff off the market would be a mistake.
I think they’re actually worse than the cartels. Are the cartels more violent and scary? For sure. Do they pull off heinous crimes? Yeah.
But…
Do they have to, in order to stay in business? Yes. Did Purdue Pharma have to? Not in the slightest.
What I mean by that is that Purdue made all it’s money at least somewhat legally. A doctor who took bribes from them and pushed Oxycontin knowing it wasn’t actually as legit — as in “doesn’t cause addiction”, pushing the medication to pretty much whoever from teenagers to grandparents, unsuspecting people in need of medical advice — is arguably of poorer moral character than a dealer selling cocaine to people who know they’re buying cocaine.
And what I mean by the cartels having no choice is that whilst I definitely don’t agree with the violence, I can understand that without it, they’d have practically no control over the trade. If however, they were given the option of actually doing it legally, I think they might give up the violence. Or at least the trade would shift away from it, because it would mean that legit cocaine traders would have the justice system and law on their side. Currently it doesn’t mean much in South-America I think, because the cartels are just so big, powerful and violent. But with time.
Responsible people should even be allowed to use those drugs. But like with alcohol, there should be products which aren’t just as pure as they can get. Like I compared earlier, buprenorphin is to hard cider as fentanyl is to moonshine.
It’s very different having a few beers which are 5% alc than downing a glass of moonshine. Same with so called “hard drugs”. I wouldn’t fuck with opiates too much, but with the proper regulation, I think even those should be allowed, and if they were, they’d eat the legal market of poisons away. Ask yourself, when’s the last time you had a chance to buy illegally made alcohol? It’s not too often that that happens. But illegally made class A drugs? Can get them about anywhere in the world.
And especially for drugs like cocaine, milder versions would be fantastic, as people could still have plenty, just wouldn’t get as affected. Like how you wouldnt’ really be able to kill yourself by drinking 4% beer. It’s just incredibly hard to get an alcohol poisoning from that because how mild it is. But with wine, it’s possible yet unlikely, but with something like 40% vodka/whisky/rum, it’s almost probable if you don’t know how much you should drink and you’re a teenager or something and with moonshine it’s almost inevitable if you actually force yourself to drink the stuff.
So for cocaine I’d say something which is perhaps a bit stronger than just coca leaves, or equivalent, but nowhere near pure face-numbing cocaine.
Bring back real Coke! Original recipe! (Coca-Cola Company is btw the largest legal producer of cocaine in the world, they still make it during the process but just sell it off to… ‘pharmaceutical companies’, or that’s what I’ve heard.)
edit sorry for the essay I just saw your reply after taking a half an ambien so I rambled a bit