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Comment by notch898a | Hacker News Reader

Diverted drugs become black market drugs. I'm sure the Mexicans are getting ultra pure fentanyl or being trained to make the pure shit from precursors. Somehow most of it ends up being stomped on by the time it reaches the consumer. That is to say just because it was pure when the junky got it, doesn't mean it was accurately represented to the end user or altered along the way. Black market diversion from treatment facilities seems non-ideal.

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The problem is the stomping isn't uniform. Whatever's being used as an adulterant, the end product has chunks of adulterant, and chunks of fentanyl, and this is what ends up killing people, because they end up with a life ending sliver of fentanyl from the heterogeneous mixture of drugs.

Killing a few people with your supply is an actual sales tactic called 'Hot Shotting' (a term for a lethal dose). When dealers cut and package for delivery they'll make a few extra strong and give them to well-known junkies who will then overdose and potentially die, in the process proving who's selling strong drugs. "That must be good stuff, Kevin died from it and they barely revived Sue."

Not only are street drugs inherently unsafe, the dealers view their customers as so expendable they're willing to kill them for advertising.

To fix this we've got to switch to government supply, but only when we simultaneously wipe out the illegal supply and suppliers, so that we don't simply compound the problem. Our interventions are like antibiotics. They lose their power over time when misused. They're best employed heavily in a cocktail and used fully.

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