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Comment by zenbit | Hacker News Reader

In 2016 there were 204 deaths due to substance abuse in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), with ~17m inhabitants Germany's most populous state. That same year there were 321 deaths in Bavaria. Bavaria has a population of only ~12m and in general has a much lower crime rate than NRW. The difference in deaths is often attributed to the fact that there are safe injection sites in NRW while there are none in Bavaria.

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That’s because Bavaria is close to the Czech republic and the bavarian/czech border is a well known import corridor. Google further info on that, if you’re interested. Also, I invite you to compare the NRW numbers to the Berlin ones.

NRW borders the Netherlands, a country with easy drug access as well. And yes, deaths per capita are much higher in Germany's city-states (Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen). But please go ahead and compare numbers on a per-city basis (2016 numbers). You will note that Munich (62 deaths, 1.4m inhabitants, ~44 deaths per capita) is very much comparable to Berlin (167 deaths, 3.5m inhabitants, ~48 deaths per capita).

Sure, gaining access to drugs in the Netherlands is easy, but usually people go there to get some of the not-so-deadly drugs, like weed and not heroin or meth, like bavaria.

The drug importers don't sell their stuff along their import corridors. They bring it to next distribution center before they start splitting it up. according your logic Texas would be one of the states with a high drug overdose mortality. You are confusing small scale crystal meth smuggling with large scale opiate importing.

It just seems like „my“ (the local) logic simply does not apply to Texas. Generalization oftentimes doesn’t work ;) For the bavarian part, there are certainly „Meth Cities“ right at the border.

>The drug importers don't sell their stuff along their import corridors.

This lacks perspective. Border states have "black tar" heroin, which comes from mexico, and is less pure than northeast heroin which is purer and in powder form instead of tar.

> That’s because Bavaria is close to the Czech republic and the bavarian/czech border is a well known import corridor.

Most stuff coming over from CZ is meth and illegal tobacco and fireworks.

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