The Horrifying Epidemic of Teen-Age Fentanyl Deaths in a Texas County

Re:The Horrifying Epidemic of Teen-Age Fentanyl Deaths in a ... by TedDoesntTalk on Thursday March 30, 2023 @01:57AM (#35368638)

Are you suggesting to legalize fentanyl so it can be purchased over the counter like aspirin?

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Re:The Horrifying Epidemic of Teen-Age Fentanyl Deaths in a ... by pcthrowaway on Thursday March 30, 2023 @02:46AM (#35368961)

Don't be silly.

You should probably restrict it to people over the age of 18 like cigarettes

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Re:The Horrifying Epidemic of Teen-Age Fentanyl Deaths in a ... by achenet on Thursday March 30, 2023 @04:19AM (#35369618)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systembolaget

if the market is a government monopoly, you'll likely have fewer problems than if t's run by violent criminals.

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Re:The Horrifying Epidemic of Teen-Age Fentanyl Deaths in a ... by nicoburns on Thursday March 30, 2023 @08:39AM (#35371716)

I think the idea would be more like legalise and/or decriminalising Xanax or MDMA or whatever it is that recreational users actually want to take (the number of people who intentionally consume opiates is dramatically lower), and to make a reliably uncontaminated supply of these substances available. This could be over the counter (presumably with age restrictions), or it could look more like no questions asked drug testing services.

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Re:The Horrifying Epidemic of Teen-Age Fentanyl Deaths in a ... by nradov on Thursday March 30, 2023 @08:50AM (#35371835)

Xanax (alprazolam) is already legal with a prescription. It is frequently prescribed for insomnia and other sleep disorders. But patients often sell some of their pills on the black market, and now drug cartels are manufacturing counterfeit Xanax pills which replace the active ingredient with fentanyl. Xanax itself has some pretty severe side effects so there would be a lot of resistance to making it available OTC.

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Re:The Horrifying Epidemic of Teen-Age Fentanyl Deaths in a ... by galaxyLogic on Saturday April 01, 2023 @12:27AM (#35397149)

Yes there should be good drugs more easily available than bad drugs. Rational people understand they don't want to get their body into a condition where they get into terrible pain if they don't get their next injection soon. Where they have to commit crimes to finance their addiction.

Rational people don't want to take street-drugs which they know might kill them because of bad quality. They are seeing a lot of people dying around them so they know.

This is conceptually not that different from methanol-laced alcohol being available during prohibition. Of course nobody wants to take methanol if they can take ethanol instead. Ethanol is very bad as well. But harm reduction should be the thing that guides our policy.

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