Posted on 03/25/2024 12:10:45 AM PDT by nickcarraway
FENTANYL KILLS. That’s what the billboard says. That’s all the billboard says—FENTANYL in a cold, light blue, KILLS in stark white against an all-black background. Below is a woman on a gurney, treated with the same dead-blue tones as the script above her. She’s covered to her armpits in a sheet, arms at her sides, awaiting an autopsy. Anyone who has seen a cop drama in the past 30 years knows the image.
When an opioid user overdoses, their lips turn a cold, light blue. That was the color of my lips when I lay slumped in a pile outside the automatic doors of an emergency room. Jenny, the girl I had absconded from rehab with just days before, shouted for help, and once she saw the staff stir to action, jumped back in the car. Gustavo, who Jenny had guilted into driving, stepped on the gas, bald tires searching for traction before squealing to life, catapulting them into a night drowning in coastal fog. I imagined the diffuse light from cherry-red plastic growing faint, the EMERGENCY dissolving in their rearview. I’m sure it was traumatic for them. I’m sure they went back to our wretched motel room and immediately got high to blunt the terror. That’s what I would have done.
Splashed across the bottom right-hand corner of the billboard are the insignia of several city agencies proudly supporting its message. What is noticeably absent is any reference to a single resource—not a website, not a phone number, not a mention of how someone might stop using fentanyl and thus avoid their impending death. The billboard looms large over a dirt lot dotted with tarps and tents and other telltale signs of DIY shelters in a southwest
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
The most radical way to save lives from Fentanyl is to place a naval blockade on Mexico from ships coming from China with the chemicals that are mixed together to produce it.
Something radical? Like don’t effing take drugs?
CC
The most radical solution would be an American version of the Boxer Rebellion, the result of China’s inactivity to fight 19th century opiate abuse via imported drugs. Our superiors sure as h*ll don’t give a [expletive] about us.
China gets its long-awaited revenge for the opium the West pushed on them?
>> Something radical? Like don’t effing take drugs?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THIS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
it’s kind of what I was discussing the other day… maybe with you? Later in the article they also mention some doctors in the US giving illicit fentanyl users a supply of opiate pills which in theory anyway keeps them from the worst of withdrawal symptoms, allows them to be fairly functional in society if the pills are not abused (such as taking 10 pills at a time or crushing and injecting it etc), requires them to get checkups in case other interventions are needed, and opens a path for intervention towards sobriety by helping to wean them off over time. I think this is a better idea, a saner policy than “safe injection sites” for street drugs, especially because the medications they would get are manufactured to pharmaceutical standards by licensed pharmaceutical companies each with a measured and reliable dosage. So let’s stop demonizing doctors for writing pain pill prescriptions, threatening to take away their licenses, help the addicts lower their risk of overdose, and work towards rehabilitation. I’d rather have functional pill poppers than 100,000 OD deaths and cities of homeless fentanyl zombies
Also as the article quotes one patient “he’s still an addict but he’s no longer a bank robber”. So much other crime is the result of drug abuse and drug policies - criminals killing each other over drug turf beefs and money, and addicts robbing homes and stores for money to feed their habits, even police addicted to the money they raise seizing the property of dealers and users. We can put the drug gangs and the drug cartels out of business and treat people for the disease that it is.
Fwiw, cocaine (which is habitual but not generally addictive if snorted) and morphine and even heroin was legal to buy in a pharmacy about 120 years ago. We only have these potent street syndthics like meth and fentanyl because they are cheap to make and the “plant based” drugs are expensive and have to be made in hidden places and smuggled. Doctors used laudanum to treat a large number of ailments and yes people abused them but it was not hidden from society and doctors and pharmacists were aware of their addictive or habitual nature and were able to caution and intervene. Street drug dealers not only don’t care about their customers they sometimes intentionally spike some of their supply hoping to overdose someone so that other addicts think their “product” is better than the other pusherman’s supply. It’s completely insane and while my idea here may not be perfect, I think it’s better than doing what we have been doing. We not only let all these immoral people get rich killing lots of people every year we also do nothing to help the addicts get straight.
“ China gets its long-awaited revenge for the opium the West pushed on them?”
US didn’t have anything to do with opium in the Qing Dynasty almost 200 years ago.
Are you on drugs?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ THIS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
again...
People OD on heroin too.
Nancy Reagan had it right years ago.
But we import everything from China, and I can imagine their adding it to products beyond illicit drugs.
Let’s save the George Floyds among us...
It would be easier to buy fentanyl, from an illegal alien.
Pain meds are also going on backorder - frequently. A few months ago Norco 10/325 was on backorder, and it is now again. Hydrocodone/APAP 10/300 is on backorder now, too. That was the replacement dose previously used when the 325’s weren’t available last time.
If duragesic Fentanyl goes on backorder, I know a few people who are screwed with the two main doses of Hydrocodone off the table.
This is the main reason why I don’t want casual street users being treated with legit prescriptions for opiates if they’re not in debilitating physical pain (and I don’t mean from withdrawal).
You may be right. Because the local Chinese takeout has me addicted to their sesame chicken.😃
CC
One doesn’t stop until they can’t stand to live that way for one more hour for one more day
Many don’t stop until they’re dead
Having had a few family members that are/were addicts, death is often the most merciful thing that could happen. They have not only destroyed their lives but also those around them. The ones that died, were grieved. Those that survived have destroyed many adjacent lives.
You have it right. Doctors are so afraid of overdosing patients or getting them hooked that they will only prescribe the absolute minimum dosage. I broke my shoulder a couple of years ago and post op, the damned nurse wouldn’t give me any pain meds. Worst night of my life.
“Let’s stop demonizing doctors for writing pain pill prescriptions, threatening to take away their licenses, help the addicts lower their risk of overdose, and work towards rehabilitation. I’d rather have functional pill poppers than 100,000 OD deaths and cities of homeless fentanyl zombies”.
End of story...
Broke a bone in my foot a few years ago and the doc refused to give me any pain meds!!!
That was insane.
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