The combination of the technology to synthesize these drugs from unconstrained pre-cursors, the intensity of their effect, the lack of education on the part of consumers, and a tracking/enforcement system which responds more slowly than conditions change is leading to a situation where tens of thousands of people are going to die essentially at their own hand.

It is not a question of 'people like to get high' it is that 'people getting high on arbitrary things will kill themselves'.

I understand that you're approaching this from a legalization standpoint, and on that we agree. But the overdose rate is "actually" sweeping the country now and that is born out by the available reports of emergency rooms around the country. And between your "regulated and safe" future and now, there is a large pile of unnecessarily dead people.

   the lack of education on the part of consumers

When weed was legalized in Oregon, I immediately knew exactly what strain/THC%/CBD% I was buying. This was not available on the black market.

Education and security come from acceptance and regulation.

That is far less dangerous than opiates; I don't think it's comparable.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13847136

IMHO Marijuana isn't a relevant example for the parent's argument because it's not that dangerous; it still is distributed illegally except for a few states in the U.S. and parts of Europe, and (almost) nobody dies from marijuana overdoses.

opioids, especially the lower potency ones, do not meet this criteria at all. With tolerance, minimum effective dose increases, but so does the lethal dose. With pharmaceutical-grade opioids whose amounts are precisely metered, it's possible to live in that window.

It's only opioids under prohibition (aka, uncertain/varying doses and ingredients) that are inherently dangerous.

There is no place in the US where traffic in marijuana is legal. The absence of state-level prohibition doesn't negate federal prohibition.

That's how a couple of people in my rehab ministry died. Meth is more reliably predictable in comparison.

Addicts are already punished enough just by being addicts. I doubt any of them want to be addicts. Making it illegal, heaping on more punishment, does not help and just makes it worse.

Government policy on addictive drugs should be focused on treatment, not punishment.

I agree that the current approach works very poorly; that doesn't mean any other approach is better. Sometimes what works poorly is still the best we can do, such as our approach to pancreatic cancer (though I don't think that's the case here).

Government restricts access to many things for safety reasons, from unsafe cars to prescription drugs to dodgy financial deals to highly enriched uranium. It's a simple formula, almost a slogan, to say 'legalize it and consumers will decide for themselves' (and in fairness maybe the parent isn't being formulaic in this case). In some cases that's true; in some cases consumers simply don't have that capability. In our business, IT security is a good example; consumers have no way to make a judgment or even know that it's working. It's the same for prescription drugs: Am I better? Is that due to the drug? The placebo effect? Natural progress? Maybe I'd be even better without the drug.

But that's all theory; before we mess with people's lives, we need evidence.

By making drugs illegal you cut off reliable, safe, and inexpensive access.

I personally know two addicts who OD'd because they acquired a batch of heroin that was more potent than they realized. One had been in and out of jail due to drugs.

They'd likely be alive today if addiction was treated as a disease rather than a crime.

> Maybe I'd be even better without the drug.

They didn't want to be addicts.

The American experiment with Prohibition suggests otherwise.

It implies that people are not using because it is illegal. Is that true for you? It isn't true for me, nor anyone I know.

For example, I voted in favor of marijuana legalization in Washington State. It's now legal. I didn't smoke weed before legalization, nor after. I simply have no desire for it. I don't know anyone who took up weed because it is now legal.

I understand the claims, but without evidence they are only a couple claims among very many. Evidence is what separates science from all the other theories of the world.

The problem with fentanyl is the dosage is in the micro-gram range which is why so many opiate addicts die from it. You simply can't gauge the dosage with such a powerful compound with any sort of accuracy.

The problem is again with education. When heroin addicts are getting stuff cut with fentanyl, they fall out because they do not know what dose they are taking.

If you know how much you are taking, these fent analogs can (and have been for years) be used quite safely)

People who become addicts don't like the highs and lows of the emotional roller coaster they're on, but it's the only way they know to cope with their emotional/physiological angst.

I've met someone who'd used cocaine 'recreationally'. His attitude was "been there, done that, don't need to use again."

Most of the street pharmacy's customers are self-medicating emotional pain. My mom didn't get hooked on the opiates her doctor recently gave her for her broken arm because she has a supportive environment.

The friend (who I've written about here before) relapsed on cocaine because she was depressed. Then she relapsed on heroin, supposedly to treat the high blood pressure cocaine gave her (but probably more because she needed something to 'numb' emotional pain). This was the summer before she met me.

Really I think she just must've been lonely. This week I found a copy of a book she gave me for my birthday after we met. She inscribed it, in part, "my heart melted the moment I first heard you speak."

I think I've successfully bullied her current court-ordered mental health providers into recognizing the mistaken diagnosis made by their colleagues in the other county. The earlier psychiatrists just thought she was "persistently disabled" because they didn't try to figure out why she'd become psychotic in the first place (doctor-administered depo provera birth control injections made her suicidal -> street pharmacy -> psychosis).

Branding these people as criminals and throwing them in prison is outright cruel.

I suspect that many psychiatric illnesses are indicative of metabolic disorders, and/or malnourishment. An effort to apply the findings of physiology to psychiatric practice would certainly lead to an Understanding that would allow effective treatments to become mainstream.

> Branding these people as criminals and throwing them in prison is outright cruel.

In the future the 'war on plants' will certainly be recognized as a crime against humanity, or at least as society's autoimmune disease.

I don't know who you or her are but the situation you describe is rather familiar to me. Thank you for being around for someone else and doing these sorts of things to help them.

Cocaine gets a bad rap and probably justifiably so (as it has ruined or taken more than few lives) but it's not the same type of addiction as opiates. If people were able to use cocaine responsibly in small amounts I really think it wouldn't be much of an issue. The trouble is that people have trouble gauging where they and tend to go overboard, particularly during a session. But it doesn't have to be used like this. A good analogy might be turning up a bottle of liquor vs slowly enjoying a few beers. With cocaine many people are simply unable to resist the temptation of overdoing and it causes problems. But in my mind it's not the same level of harmful as something like opiates or methamphetamine.

I don't recommend running out and looking for cocaine because "hey it's not really that bad" though. Chances are good you'll get carried away. As for smoking or injecting cocaine, that's a whole different topic.

A girl I work with moved house a couple of years ago, to move in with some cool people who invited her out to cool parties. To fit in she tried the cocaine, then moved on to buying her own to share with her best friend. Roll on two years and her life is as good as over. Bearing in mind that she is just a workmate, not the love of my life or a relation, however, finding out that she has moved on from cocaine to crack has been the most shocking thing that has happened to my life. Today she has conjunctivitis which is a progression of what kept her off work last week - some grizzly puss filled sores in her throat and ears. Obviously it is just a flu and not because she has wiped out her sinuses by smoking/snorting cocaine.

As mentioned I have seen these white powders around all my life, if I think now how lucky I was to be naive enough to not take the path of my workmate, otherwise I would be done over a dozen times by now!!! Only now in seeing the descent of my workmate have I learned what these things do. I am now wondering how the marriages and jobs worked out with those people I saw along the way with the white powders at parties, maybe I saw them at the stage my workmate was at a couple of years ago, seemingly in control.

I have had to read 'Beyond Addiction' to personally cope with the one-person humanitarian crisis that I only learned of three months ago. I can already see how the next stage gets progressed to, my workmate has nightmares and awful sleep, I believe that 'benzos' help with that or there is also the heroin mix. So then there is the descent into homelessness and prostitution, then the legendary rock bottom where a methodone script can be my workmate's existence for the rest of her days.

I would do anything to save my workmate but it is already too late. If she lasts three months in work then that will be a miracle. With a 'payday loans' existence as it is the fall is going to be out of control crazy stuff.

Essentially her problem is a triple onion of the childhood hurt, the drug itself and the scene of 'happy party people' that she 'has a good time with'. She thinks that if she can solve the childhood hurt then everything will be great but she ignores the elephant in the room.

The disease she has is 'addiction' and there is no cure. It makes no difference whether she is on cocaine or opiates because the journey is the same. It is a horror movie and it really does affect more than just the addict.

I understand that Cocaine's effect on brain chemistry is sort-of like the Mono Amine Oxidase Inhibitors (MAOIs, 1st-generation anti-depressants). The reversible MAOIs are safer than the non-reversible ones.

Methylene Blue is a research chemical that has MAOI properties, and is reversible.

If you're interested in emailing let me know where to contact you.

This affects junkies to occasional/recreational drug users.

Not sure about the US, but there has been significant overdoses and fatalities relating to fentanyl and other related.

It's a word of caution, you don't know what's in your drugs, it can kill you more than ever.

Same here in the US. I live in a heavily effected area and its always the same thing fentanyl. People are used to taking a certain dose so that's what they do not knowing fentanyl is in there and it usually results in a death unless someone has or can get narcan there quickly.

Part of me wonders why they don't just do a little first and then do more, but I guess I get it- they are addicted and they just want their fix ASAP.

So if you try a small sample, or a large one, it doesn't matter.. it could be the next hit you try has that extra microgram of fentanyl.

I have had friends with brothers who died from taking a all night study aid in university, that happened to have Carfentanyl in it.

Always caution on the side of safe regardless of what type of illicit drug is, or if it's your first time, once in a lifetime.

They just don't make illicit drugs like they use to... They could definately kill u always, but now the potency of a microgram difference can and that's pretty scary.

Actually, this has kind of always been true. http://everything2.com/title/Heroin%252C+MPTP%252C+and+the+k...

The problem is that an illegal drug has no quality control. If you want to stop this kind of stuff, legalizing it is one of the few (possibly only) useful solutions.

People aren't very selective at what they stick up their nose or in their veins. Your average cocaine end-user is the 14th person who's had their hands on that particular drug. Chances are it's been cut with who the heck knows what at every step along the way, since everyone wants to maximize their profits.

When you get a package of what-should-be drugs from China or Colombia or anywhere, who's to say what's actually in it? The FDA isn't testing that stuff. If you think it's heroin and there's even a little fentanyl mixed in it, your last use could be fatal.

How much safer would 'recreational users' be if they had a legal, clean (pure), supply and a place to use it where they are monitored?

As the parent posts have said, the above combined with help for getting out of the hole in the same place would probably be more effective. It would /ALSO/ be the most effective way of defeating the criminals that make money off of the drugs; by depriving them of sales.

>Crime Issues: 60% drop in felony crimes by patients (80% drop after one year in the program). 82% drop in patients selling heroin.

>Death Rates: No one has died from a heroin overdose since the inception of the program. The heroin used is inspected for purity and strength by technicians.

>Disease Rates: New infections of Hepatitis and HIV have been reduced for patients in the program.

>New Use Rates: Slightly lower than expected. 1) As reported in the Lancet June 3, 2006, the medicalisation of using heroin has tarnished the image of heroin and made it unattractive to young people. 2) Most new users are introduced to heroin by members of their social group and 50% of users also deal to support their habit. Therefore, with so many users/sellers in treatment, non-users have fewer opportunities to be exposed to heroin, especially in the rural areas.

>*Cost Issues: 48 dollars/day: Patient costs are covered by national health insurance agency. Patients pay 700 dollars/year for the compulsory insurance. Note: The Swiss save about 38 dollars per day per patient mostly in lowered costs for court and police time, due to less crime committed by the patients.

[0] http://www.citizensopposingprohibition.org/resources/swiss-h...

Legalized drugs would absolutely deprive criminals of domestic profits but there would still be gangs that export and fight over that black market. For example large amounts of marijuana in Canada ends up exported to Vietnam and sold at every newspaper stand in Hanoi for premium prices to the new middle class users there. The various gangs shoot each other here on a regular basis for control of that export operation or rob legal grows to get free product. In other words large amounts of money will have to go to export prevention enforcement.

The best argument for legalized/regulated narcotics is it prevents this kind of synthetic opioid medical disaster by either prescribing heroin to addicts or selling it without prohibition price spikes due to busts, so the incentive to import cheaper synthetics is gone and drug quality could be more easily identified by the end user. The income from any sales can go to treatment to prevent new addicts but many of us remember having been promised by governments who run gambling/lotteries how that money would go towards gambling addiction treatment and instead it just disappeared into general revenue.

I don't think there's any data out yet, but the idea was to prevent overdoses, but also provide clean syringes to avoid HIV transmission.

https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=insite+vancouver

I don't have any stats to provide, but if your interested (as far as heroin) check out the Netherlands. Last i knew they had a program.

Edit: I believe the Netherlands have had their program since sometime in the 90's, so there should be data available.

It depends. Someone looked at PDE5 inhibitors (i.e. Viagra) purchased from online pharmacies and found that their products were accurately labeled. They were "own-brand" and from a clandestine lab, however the product was what is claimed to be. But these pharmacies rely on repeat customers and word-of-mouth, that encourages them to be responsible.

Dunno about opiates. If the customers seek consistent quality and use a "research chemical" website instead of a guy on a street corner this may actually be a step in the right direction, you get consistent quality, and opiate addicts with a regular supply of drug are surprisingly functional.

The patent literature is vast and the pharmacology established. You don't have to resort to the kind of experimentation that Shulgin did when he worked on phenethylamines (i.e. amphetamines).

Anecdotally the issue of potentially fatal heroin doses from fentanyl adulteration came up in a citizen's police class I took in Houston. One of the officers there claimed drug dealers don't mind accidentally killing the occasional customer because it puts word on the street that the dealer has really potent product. Who knows if that's really true but it's an interesting theory, anyway.

I can almost guarantee, if you get a drug in the mail chances are its a research chemical that will probably get you high, but NOBODY knows what the long term effects are.

I think carfentanil actually poses a unique challenge, because it's extremely potent and it's hard to accurately portion out such small doses.