Fentanyl-related overdoses are leading cause of death for Americans age 18 to 45 | Hacker News Reader

Fentanyl-related overdoses are leading cause of death for Americans age 18 to 45

geekwire.com

This is effectively just propaganda.

Legalize (or decriminalize) drugs and the problem will go away or at least have a clearer solution. Pretending it's helpful to computationally search for new drugs to make illegal is counterproductive and ends up killing people.

I’m not sure what overdosing has to do with legality. Wouldn’t overdoses happen regardless of how someone obtains their drugs?

"Heroin" in the US is essentially almost entirely fentanyl analogues these days. The only safe way to dose fentanyl analogues is volumetric - which is not how the vast majority of drug users use opiods (or really any drugs). Otherwise, fentanyl is extremely likely over continued use to result in a user using more than intended. This, combined with polydrug use complications, has been driving the increased opiod death rate.

Legal drugs could ensure users are getting what they actually want. See: DULF providing chemically pure diacetylmorphine, cocaine, methamphetamine in Vancouver.

No it's not. Heroin has only modest blood-brain penetration. Fentanyl has nearly 100% penetration. This difference is what makes fentanyl so much stronger than heroin and so much more dangerous. Biochemically it's a different thing - not "just another opiate".

Huh? What comment are you referring to? I didn't call fentanyl and similar analogues "just another opiate". (Also, fentanyl is an opiod. It is not a natural opiate. And diacetylmorphine, thanks to its improved lipid solubility compared to morphine, has an approximately 70% brain absorption rate. That's not "modest".)

Your reply really confuses me.

More options for safe use and quality control. And the really potent drugs are preferred under prohibition because they are smuggled more easily, but they are easy to screw up and kill people with.

Without historical prohibition, most people would be smoking opium and not od'ing. Now all they can get is sketchy fentanyl laced stuff.

Overdoses mostly occur as a consequence of ignorance, of the substance being used, if it's cut or "spiced up" deliberately with fentanyl or other potent analogues, and of the consequences of misuse.

Drugs are used by regular people, in public, in open view, in reasonable doses, and people behave normally enough that you wouldn't expect them to have an opiate buzz, or to be high on amphetamines, up to and including meth.

Responsible drug users have prescriptions, or rigorously test their drugs, and educate themselves about the effects, dosages, cumulative limits over time, emergency responses, supplementation and hydration, and so on. When the user is educated and the substance is pure, overdoses are very rare.

Tylenol overdose results in acute liver damage, among other things. 100k calls per year are made to poison control hotlines regarding Tylenol, with over half that number being hospitalized.

Overdoses are caused by ignorance, the stigma that prevents harm reduction education, and the war on drugs allowing mystery substances to proliferate in black markets.

Provide real drug education in high school and overdoses and addiction will plummet. End the war on drugs, legalize everything, but require pharmacy distribution and yearly per-substance licensing and mandated education, and most drug problems will go away. The remainder should be treated as health care, under the auspices of doctors and caregivers.

Go to Walgreens and get your crack license renewed. Or your lsd, dmt, and shrooms license before hitting burning man.

Given the fact the media has continued to propel an extremely misleading narrative about fentanyl use increasing primarily due to the prescription opiate boom years, I wouldn't expect them to get anything right about how to handle this situation.

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