Fentanyl crisis in Calgary: Vice documentary

[jayswin]

If anything I probably overreacted originally in my posts towards Aleks, not because of him but because the tone of the posters defending him felt a little too "He's deals with addicts so he knows what he's talking about"/"How silly to question someone in the industry with real world experience".

He's a got a small piece of the puzzle, but his insight is still appreciated.

[AltaGuy]

Have known a few people with this addiction, one of whom died from an overdose and another who committed suicide because of it. It does make you stupid, and is ridiculously hard to overcome like all opiate addictions. In my opinion there should be free, prison-like detox programs for users as the public health crisis this represents is becoming frighteningly huge.

The best treatments (only?) for fentanyl users currently cost upwards of $10 grand, which as you can imagine, most don't have.

[cam_wmh]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I'm still of the mind set that if you catch a dealer selling this it should be absolutely life in prison with hard labor.

They're selling a killer drug and gambling with peoples life, that to me makes these dealers way more reprehensible then the already parasitic reprehensible drug dealer.

I'd also be ok with hanging them.

They're literally killing people for a profit.

Are you suggesting because they're selling illicits, that they are completely void of any business acumen? (Killing their customers)

[AltaGuy]

Originally Posted by cam_wmh

Are you suggesting because they're selling illicits, that they are completely void of any business acumen? (Killing their customers)

Yeah, as sad as that is, it's true: the most successful viruses aren't the deadliest, but the ones that keep spreading and don't kill their hosts.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by GGG

Is the illegality of fentynal why anyone chooses not to use it?

Your right this isn't weed where use likely increases once it's legal. Just like I don't huff solvents I don't do fentynal because it's stupid. The more harmful a drug is the more the stinger the argument for legalization is. The only reason to have something illegal is to reduce use.

Use likely would increase if legal. This is incredibly harmful stuff.

What you're missing here is addiction. Legalization would likely increase the number of people addicted significantly. This isn't weed where we're not worried about addiction as a public health issue.

How much taxes would need to be collected to pay for the resulting crisis? You can say current rules aren't working. I'd counter they're working far better than saying "have at 'er". Allowing capitalistic urges to control distribution of an addictive drugs would give us tobacco that's fat, far worse

[Aleks]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Use likely would increase if legal. This is incredibly harmful stuff.

What you're missing here is addiction. Legalization would likely increase the number of people addicted significantly. This isn't weed where we're not worried about addiction as a public health issue.

How much taxes would need to be collected to pay for the resulting crisis? You can say current rules aren't working. I'd counter they're working far better than saying "have at 'er". Allowing capitalistic urges to control distribution of an addictive drugs would give us tobacco that's fat, far worse

It is legal.....i give Fentanyl all the time...........it's just controlled

[Reaper]

Originally Posted by Aleks

It is legal.....i give Fentanyl all the time...........it's just controlled

Not well enough.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Aleks

It is legal.....i give Fentanyl all the time...........it's just controlled

Sorry, I clarified that earlier too. I dispense it all the time. I meant recreational use.

Opiates are not cocaine, weed, LSD, MDMA. They are a totally different beast

[afc wimbledon]

No one that scores smack from a dial a dope or some trap house has any misapprehension that the drug is harmless, they are all aware they are playing Russian roulette.

Doesnt obviously mean they want to die but overdoses are an everyday occurrence for them, they always have been, I've seen these kinds of events for years, China white was the same back in the mid nineties, I buried ten or twelve kids back then, they couldn't get the needle out of their arm it killed them so quickly.

[Aleks]

Originally Posted by Reaper

Not well enough.

True. Even w18 which came out shortly after fentanyl was just a test lab substance with no actual medicinal value. But somehow got out. And not just the normal people selling their percs and codeine tabs. Although I do recall years ago someone selling their fentanyl patches they had by prescription and people would scrape em...

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Reaper

Not well enough.

Just to clarify, it's not diverted fentanyl we're seeing. This isn't prescription stuff ending up on the streets. It's coming in from overseas and it's made in clandestine labs. I feel like there's a bit of education needed here.

Useful tidbit #1: the reason it's put in things that don't normally contain opiates is to increase the number of addicts. If I'm a dealer and I lace the joints I sell with fentanyl, I've likely created a few more guaranteed customers because it doesn't take long for dependence to develop. So what if 2 people died, I've made 18 more repeat customers. I'm not worried about lawsuits.

Useful tidbit 2: the reason it's so dangerous is that it's about 100x as potent as morphine and at least 60x more potent than heroin (pure heroin, way more potent than the street stuff). It's one thing to accidentally put twice as much as some is expecting with oxycodone or heroin, but that likely won't kill them. Without sophisticated equipment, you can imagine putting 10 or 50 times too much is easy. A person can visually tell the difference between 80mg of a powder and 40mg if they're used to it. You can't tell the difference between 0.4mg and 0.2mg.

Useful tidbit #3: fentanyl is extremely cheap to make. Opioids (opiates that are morphine derivatives like oxycodone, hydrocodone, heroin, hydromorphone, etc) are much more expensive. It's cheap to add fentanyl to things.

Useful tidbit #4: this is the big one. Because of all the 3 things I pointed out above, many of the overdose victims didn't know they were getting fentanyl. Maybe it was just a joint that someone laced (not that common, but exists), but more often they thought they were getting oxycontin, hydromorphone or heroin. Because it's cheap, drug cartels are manufacturing fake opiates that are really just fentanyl disguised as whatever. It works similarly, however then dosing becomes even more important. If a fake Oxycontin 80mg pill is manufactured, they would only need 0.4mg of fentanyl to elicit the same effect. Think now of how easy it would be to screw that up. This is why people are dying. There's stories now that Vancouver hasn't had actual heroin for over a year. All of it is fake heroin with fentanyl in it. That's scary because you really can't know what's in it.


http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/firs...y-in-kamloops/

On the way back to Kamloops, police pulled the pair over and discovered a Louis Vuitton bag containing nearly 400 grams of cocaine and 490 fentanyl pills made to look like oxycodone, also known as Percocet.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Sorry, I clarified that earlier too. I dispense it all the time. I meant recreational use.

Opiates are not cocaine, weed, LSD, MDMA. They are a totally different beast

But isn't the main death issue with fentynol the street created concoctions where users are playing Russian Roulette with what's in it?

I know the drug itself is terrible but it sounds like the street level stuff is a whole different beast and wouldn't legalization at least help in that regard?

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by jayswin

But isn't the main death issue with fentynol the street created concoctions where users are playing Russian Roulette with what's in it?

I know the drug itself is terrible but it sounds like the street level stuff is a whole different beast and wouldn't legalization at least help in that regard?

Yes, but then you're saving a few hundred deaths at the expense of thousands of new addicts.

Safe access from safe houses makes sense. Sanctioning it and selling it in corner stores doesn't.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by cam_wmh

Are you suggesting because they're selling illicits, that they are completely void of any business acumen? (Killing their customers)

They don't think like that and they don't care like that. They care about the immediate score and the cash in their hand, it goes towards their willingness to sell a vicious killer drug.

Its not like drug dealers care about their customers long term life.

If they did, when they saw their clients who were hooked on Crystal showing up with scabbed up faces and ulcers on their bodies, and their skin sagging they might say "Hey dude maybe I should cut you off for a while"

But instead its "you got cash, here's your sh%t"

[afc wimbledon]

Overdoses, deaths, are actually used as a mark of the purity of product, it increases demand for that particular dealers gear. Some dealers will intentionally let a handful of OD's happen to get demand up then cut the purity down to stretch the supply out and up the profit.

It's helpful in this world to not even try to apply normal rules of behaviour or logic, it is logical, but not your logic, their logic.

[TSXCman]

I lost my little cousin in January to this crap. Laced party drugs that he tried shut his organs down.

[polak]

Originally Posted by Canehdianman

I don't think increasing the punishment would do much. It hasn't anywhere else in the world for other drugs.

Education is likely a better place to start. And comprehensive (and free) rehab programs.

Education is useless too. The only way to solve the problem is legalization.

[Canehdianman]

Originally Posted by polak

Education is useless too. The only way to solve the problem is legalization.

Your opinion is wrong and you should feel bad.

[Coach]

Originally Posted by polak

Education is useless too. The only way to solve the problem is legalization.

It's not useless. You can't legalize these things without also instituting proper education about their effects, and treatment for those who get in trouble.

Legalization of pot, MDMA etc.. would help keep those things things from being laced with this crap, but the crap will still be around.

[calculoso]

Originally Posted by polak

Education is useless too. The only way to solve the problem is legalization.

How will legalization prevent this fake stuff from still being sold?