Opioids Why is fentanyl dominant in the US?

[polarthedog]

Everything’s gonna be ok, don’t worry

 

[GetMeOutOfThisCRAP]

It is occasionally refined domestically in the U.S., but honestly, though I knew what was likely meant, I felt the need to over-clarify the point. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ my bad, @GetMeOutOfThisCRAP

Sorry I'll just quote this. There is one thing you said that stuck out to me in particular. "Fent is an inanimate powder." You're right that humans seeking it out knowingly or unknowingly would be the ones to push the powder to their own deaths.

However, it reminds me of purdue pharma and what they've done to the US. They pushed a HIGHLY addictive product onto the public like breath mints, and then blamed them for their own abuse. Fent is just really good, lol. Personally I only wish it was not in heroin whatsoever. I'm sure almost all of you wish that as well. Its just if someone wanted fent they should be able to get fent, and a heroin addict then would be able to just get only heroin. We have so much fent in this country that we might as well just throw it in everything at this point (and we are). It's making its way into xanax bars and cocaine at this point! The varied dosage of fent is really whats killing everyone though. There's no way to know how much fent is within your next heroin shoot. Its not going out of the US heroin's supply any time soon. As some users said, at this point it seems like fent alone would be a much safer bet to use 100% of the time than heroin. It's just that heroin has some specific properties that users find more addictive and desirable. :/ So many people are about to die from fent-laced heroin. I do not even want to think of that number.

 

[unodelacosa]

Sorry I'll just quote this. There is one thing you said that stuck out to me in particular. "Fent is an inanimate powder." You're right that humans seeking it out knowingly or unknowingly would be the ones to push the powder to their own deaths.

However, it reminds me of purdue pharma and what they've done to the US. They pushed a HIGHLY addictive product onto the public like breath mints, and then blamed them for their own abuse. Fent is just really good, lol. Personally I only wish it was not in heroin whatsoever. I'm sure almost all of you wish that as well. Its just if someone wanted fent they should be able to get fent, and a heroin addict then would be able to just get only heroin. We have so much fent in this country that we might as well just throw it in everything at this point (and we are). It's making its way into xanax bars and cocaine at this point! The varied dosage of fent is really whats killing everyone though. There's no way to know how much fent is within your next heroin shoot. Its not going out of the US heroin's supply any time soon. As some users said, at this point it seems like fent alone would be a much safer bet to use 100% of the time than heroin. It's just that heroin has some specific properties that users find more addictive and desirable. :/ So many people are about to die from fent-laced heroin. I do not even want to think of that number.

Umm, so I mostly agree with everything you said. I’m not sure if that was supposed to be in contradiction to what I said about Fentanyl just being an inanimate object, but you just made the point I was driving at as well. To wit: Fentanyl is not inherently good or bad. I too would much rather fentanyl be separately acquirable and never wind up in the hands of mass-drug-producing criminal organizations. And I too wish Heroin were free of all Fentanyl. It’s pretty clear how dangerous it is.

I’m not blaming the users who die of fentanyl overdose, especially when they don’t even know it’s present in their heroin or other drugs. I lost a very good friend I’ve known since high school this past April to a H/Fent OD. I am not at all trying to downplay the seriousness of this, nor am I keen to stand up for Fentanyl, but blaming the drug is the wrong approach. In rare instances, Fentanyl can be safer than weed. Don’t believe me? Check it out: let’s say a doctor is in a third-world, underdeveloped nation and is presented with a patient suffering from a form of gastroenteritis like dysentery. Now let’s say the only two options the doctor has is cannabis or Fentanyl for said patient. The cannabis would further dehydrate the patient as it’s known to do, but meanwhile the fentanyl will cause constipation, effectively stopping them from losing more hydration to diarrhea. In this case, the cannabis is dangerous to the patient while the fentanyl would quite possible save their life.

I’m not saying this is a common scenario, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

And anyway it’s really popular right now to point the finger at Big Pharma and blame that industry for the opioid crisis. But I say equally as guilty are the doctors who pretended they didn’t know better and we’re mislead by Purdue, et al., and I say this is a crock of shit. Every doctor out there should definitely know better than to ever think a morphine derivative wouldn’t pose serious drug-dependency/“addiction” (I hate this metaphorical term but it’s ubiquitous) problems. Same with the independent sales reps.

It’s also worth considering China’s role in all of this. https://globalnews.ca/news/4658188/fentanyl-china-canada-diplomatic-tensions/

China can seriously go fuck itself. Considering how much evidence points to China relentlessly shipping fentanyl to North America, knowing full and well that it’s killing 100,000 people each year currently, I think this should maybe be seen as an act of aggression and a declaration of war. China, with all their oppression of any and all who dissent, to me, is the functional equivalent of Nazi Germany in 2021.

To me, the answer is fairly obvious: end drug prohibition, legalize and regulate recreational drug use, and steal the funding that is otherwise afforded to China and various transnational criminal organizations.

Seriously, you didn’t really think I was attempting to blame users for their accidental deaths from unknown fentanyl cut, did you? There has not been one day go by since my friend died in April that I haven’t thought about him, his mom and sister he left behind, and how I’ll never get to speak to him again. I’m getting choked up just mentioning it… … I‘m not some evil monster like ppl on this forum like to make me out to be, you know…

 

[deficiT]

Cheap, prevalent, and potent. What else do you need?

 

[unodelacosa]

Cheap, prevalent, and potent. What else do you need?

Safety, decriminalization, penalty severities reduced for illegal trafficking crimes, sensible regulation, reasonable legislation for recreational use of all drugs, a defunding not of the police overall but just defunding of all municipal-level vice squads’ drug law enforcement budgets and cut the budget and personnel for sex worker “crimes”, which, like drug “crimes” are defined as victimless “crimes”, an oxymoron and a harmful concept to society. What else? Um: defunding of at least half the municipal-level S.W.A.T. teams so no more flash grenades get accidentally lobbed into a baby’s crib while local S.W.A.T. po-po’s are too busy playing Cops™ to notice they’ve raided the wrong home in a botched drug dealer bust, and along the way, permanently caused vision damage to an infant.

The Drug War is a depressing disaster and I would piss on the graves of Henry Kissinger (once the evil sorcery keeping him animate finally wears off and he dies), Richard Nixon, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, and most of all, Harry Anslinger, if I had the chance and it weren’t illegal and highly likely to culminate in federal charges for me…

But so redistribute those federal budget allocations to honest PSA campaigns, addiction recovery clinics, and treating mental health disorders (since so many people with drug problems are often self-medicating). Some police officers may have to find other work, but it’s not a wonderful time to be in L.E. probably right now, at least not in the U.S. Meanwhile, therapist jobs and other careers in addiction recovery and the like will see a boon.

It’s so obvious that it’s counterproductive to take someone who needs help with a drug problem, and compound that by giving them a serious legal problem that will haunt them on records for a vey long time if not permanently.

 

[darvocet21]

My name is Alicia, and i have been addicted to fentanyl for the last 6 months.
When i first tried it, i almost fell out, it was so strong. I then learned how to dose correctly, and was able to feel as though i had snorted 3 Roxy 30's at once and was peaking by snorting only a PINCH of this stuff. Fentanyl became my biggest obsession, seen as my "magical dust". My "medicine". My habit grew to almost 200$ a day.
I then realized how much easier this was than hunting down a pill supplier in hopes that he got his script on time to pay a dollar a milligram for a fucking pill. Fentanyl is economical, cheap, and easy to cut. Its more potent and it's what opiate junkies are after.

Strange sales pitch

 

[sekio]

The largest area from which future drugs related to heroin might emerge is that which is completely independent of any opium sources. Many completely synthetic substitutes for morphine have been prepared and evaluated, and all of them are potentially available from domestic origins. [...] An outgrowth of this line of exploration is the development and clinical evaluation of morphine-like analgesics such as Fentanyl (active in humans as a narcotic at about 25 ug intravenously) and its isopropylamine analog, which is about twice as active.

like I always say, Paul Janssen is rolling in his fucking grave. At the time fentanyl was actually a real breakthrough because it could be used as a relatively safe anesthetic for cardiac procedures and had a useful but not too long half life.
Once it appeared on the streets the game was over. It's not only cheaper and easier to smuggle than heroin and does not rely on poppy plants, but also the shorter half life means instead of addicts needing to buy one $20 bag to keep them okay all day, they now have to spend 5x as much because a single dose will only last maybe 2-4 hours before withdrawal kicks back in. Plus fentanyl makes your dope more "potent" than the competition, plus it drives tolerance up so hard that once you've used it for a while even the purest heroin will no longer "work"...

 

[Hsniffer]

like I always say, Paul Janssen is rolling in his fucking grave. At the time fentanyl was actually a real breakthrough because it could be used as a relatively safe anesthetic for cardiac procedures and had a useful but not too long half life.
Once it appeared on the streets the game was over. It's not only cheaper and easier to smuggle than heroin and does not rely on poppy plants, but also the shorter half life means instead of addicts needing to buy one $20 bag to keep them okay all day, they now have to spend 5x as much because a single dose will only last maybe 2-4 hours before withdrawal kicks back in. Plus fentanyl makes your dope more "potent" than the competition, plus it drives tolerance up so hard that once you've used it for a while even the purest heroin will no longer "work"...

fuck fentanyl

 

[GetMeOutOfThisCRAP]

This thread was made a while ago by me... just wanted to say randomly since seeing it pop up again--my crazy government conspiracy theory is that the USA allows fent and A LOT of it freely into its boarders via China due to the massive amount of debt the US owes China. It was one way to pay it back.

I'm like someone on the internet.. and this could just be crazy.. but I currently personally do not see how it would be in the USA *to the extent that fent is* without it being done intentionally by both party members (being the USA and China working together under the table). Has anyone else thought this before? It is strange... it has to be intentional to have this much fent within our country. I just don't see it being an accident.. there would be a little fent if that was the case. We have soooo much fent within our country. It just makes me wonder.

 

[nznity]

It's in the Elites Agenda to reduce the population.

 

[nznity]

I know a guy who sells fent. He’s making crazy money because the people who do it, will do anything for it. He went out to this little country town like 2 hours away from the city and we never see him til it’s time for him to buy more. He’s living like a king up there. All off fentanyl. He compares it to how crack was in the 80s. Super cheap, super addictive, and super profitable.

He must have a dozen of dead people thanks to his lovely product. IF I dealed Dope, first off I would not cut it, I'd only sell premium raw dope. 2nd, only sell to trustworthy ppl.itz when u get greedy that things go to shit. And last but not least, I wouldn't buy flashy stuff that drew attention. I'm a simple person, idc much about the material. The idiots that go to jail are the ones who go from almost homeless living on welfare type of cunt that after 9 months is driving a 80k$+ car and full of fking GOLD from those cheesy ass big chains to those horrible grills they put on their mouths as if they were fuckin dogs...

 

[Pickledlemons]

Most addicts I know prefer fent. Its just a matter of math. Fentanyl is stronger, their tolerances have adapted and heroin doesn't do the job anymore. I guess its different everywhere but there is this pervasive narrative that drug users and trying to buy heroin and getting fent instead. But that hasn't been my experience. They want fentanyl. Heroin doesn't usually come in blue, red, pink and purple.

 

[Pickledlemons]

I know a guy who sells fent. He’s making crazy money because the people who do it, will do anything for it. He went out to this little country town like 2 hours away from the city and we never see him til it’s time for him to buy more. He’s living like a king up there. All off fentanyl. He compares it to how crack was in the 80s. Super cheap, super addictive, and super profitable.

I used to do this years back. Ordered fent right from china. Can't use numbers here but the markup was about 4,000% percent. Still couldn't make any money because people would come begging for free shit and I would always give it to them. They would ask to front and never pay back. They'd test it, says its good, then come back when they've finished the bag and say they weren't happy with the quality. I'm clearly not cut out to sell drugs, too soft lol. Who wants to do that anyway? Just leads to prison and an empty resume.

 

[Fire&Water]

Just like the gov't planned
as usual

 

[JackARoe]

Most addicts I know prefer fent. Its just a matter of math. Fentanyl is stronger, their tolerances have adapted and heroin doesn't do the job anymore.

You know as I read posts and try and understand the whole fentanyl issue sometimes one sentence says it all. I always look for logical reasons and i think you nailed it. If a person is using fentanyl then even grade A heroin won't cut it. So it is simple math. We see that with the super strong benzos, once someone takes milligrams of flubromazolam then regular etizolam or alprazolam has no satisfying effect anymore.

It almost reminds me of all the psychologies of recovering from addictions that came about in the 1990's. All kinds of psychological reasons a person uses. I narrowed it down for myself and that too was simple math. Yeah ok maybe my parents didn't raise me 100% but the real reason I would use heroin is that simple math. It f*cking feels good. End of story. Humans gravitate towards what feels good. That is the simple math part of addiction for me.

So the notion that someone is wanting heroin but ends up purchasing fentanyl is not the whole story. Some people WANT fentanyl and once that tolerance skyrockets then even good heroin is not satisfying. I always thought the very short duration would be a deterrent. I guess not.