Re:Bleak New Estimates in Drug Epidemic: A Record 72,000 Ove...
by emiliobumachar on Thursday August 16, 2018 @08:45AM
(#17774115)
"the purity of heroin varies wildly, anywhere from 10-60% strength on the street"
That's a sixfold increase. This is the key to understand overdoses. Keep in mind the last time you went a little overboard with alcohol, coffee, or even sugar. What would have happened if, unknown to you, you had actually taken six times as much?
overdoses can happen in many ways. sometimes it is genuine user error; ie, the person goes overboard and simply takes too much, or they don't properly account for the drop in tolerance after a period of abstinence.
> most are acquired through medical prescription
this might be true overall, but i'm not sure it's true of illegal/abusive use of the drugs. i can't easily find precise numbers, but prescription drugs appear to account for less than half of total opioid overdose deaths [1].
this brings us to the next (and as far as i can tell, primary) cause of overdose deaths: variance in purity. the purity of heroin varies wildly, anywhere from 10-60% strength on the street. add fentanyl hotspots to the mix, and suddenly addicts are overdosing on what they consider conservative "tester" doses.
[1] https://talbottcampus.com/prescription-drug-abuse-statistics...