Op-Ed, LA Times on Fentanyl poisoning. This is not "Reefer Madness" of the old days...

[Hekate]

I highly recommend the whole article, and have cross-posted this from Editorials.

No more ‘harmless’ recreational drug experimentation

ROBIN ABCARIAN

This is shocking: Poisoning by illicit fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for adults aged 18 to 45 in the U.S., says the federal government, surpassing suicide, gun violence and car accidents.

The tragic stories are becoming commonplace. Three young professionals in New York City ordered cocaine from the same delivery service and died alone after the coke turned out to be fentanyl. Three adults died in a home on the Venice canals after snorting what they thought was cocaine. A 17-year-old Eagle Scout in Northern California bought what he thought was a Percocet tablet and died slumped over the desk in his bedroom. A 15-year-old girl was found dead in the bathroom of her Los Angeles high school after swallowing what she thought was a prescription pain pill. Five West Point cadets on spring break in Florida were poisoned by fentanyl-laced cocaine.

You can’t really call most of these deaths and near-deaths overdoses, though they are usually described that way. “Overdose” to me implies the victims were aware of what they were ingesting and overdid it. (These are not people addicted to fentanyl; they haven’t developed a tolerance for opioids, although anyone who gets clean and relapses could be in danger of accidentally overdosing.) Instead, these are unwitting self-poisonings. The victims didn’t sign up for fetanyl.

MORE at page A18


https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/latimes/default.aspx?token=42e23962a5d74614be16bae3d62d13e7&utm_id=78395&sfmc_id=1778350&edid=adf27f39-8b40-4292-bfed-ec6a3f1f8f20

[SunSeeker]

1. Yup. These are not ODs. They're fatal poisonings.

And the often only witness to who the pusher was is dead, so arrests are rarely made.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

2. It is absolutely imperative that take fentanyl seriously.

Time to stop making it into a joke just because some right-wing loon does a bogus "Halloween scare."

This shit is real. And deadly as fuck.

My wife, who works in the schools, did training for administering Narcan earlier in the term. Because kids are dying.

[WarGamer]

3. Now come the folks who will call the article alarmist and say "its not that bad"

I've NEVER understood why some people are against people spreading the word re: Fentanyl.

[BlueTsunami2018]

4. Intentionally putting fentanyl into anything is murder.

If you're cutting your coke with fentanyl, you're a murderer. If you're pressing it into pills and selling it as Percocet, you're a murderer. Putting it in anything without warning people is murder. Flat out.

[Hekate]

5. I agree

[ProfessorGAC]

6. So Do I

Knowingly put a deadly substance into anything is the same as the Tylenol/cyanide event.
That was murder & so is this.

[Beaverhausen]

7. What I don't understand is why would dealers want to kill their customers

Can someone explain?

[BlueTsunami2018]

8. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Not a lot of these people are super smart either. It could be that they’re trying to get their customers addicted. It could be that they think they’re enhancing whatever it is they’re selling. Putting a depressant into a stimulant seems incredibly stupid to me.

Whatever the reason, they’re killing people.

[Genki Hikari]

9. Drug users often mix uppers and downers

They get high on the uppers for fun, then need to come down, so they take a downer. Some users take one with the other to take the worst edges off both. Or they take coke, and then take heroin to come down a bit so they can do MORE coke. See: John Belushi. That's what he was doing when he was mixing coke and heroin.

Either way, the combination of uppers and downers becomes a vicious cycle, and one that's really--really--hard to break free of. When my mom worked drug rehab, she said that they had close to 0% success breaking the upper + downer patients of their addictions.

[BlueTsunami2018]

10. Sure but most people aren't interested in speedballing.

That’s pretty advanced behavior. And people who are into it like to regulate their intake on their own.

These victims were just looking to do a few lines and party. They were murdered.