“No drug is safe right now. No drug is safe. We are finding fentanyl in cocaine, we are finding it in heroin, we’re finding it in meth, we’re finding it in OxyContin,” 17th Judicial District Attorney Brian Mason said.
Why is fentanyl in the drugs? The market place wants it?
My one reference in this case is one drug user hated another drug user so convinced/paid the drug supplier to add fentanyl to the other guys drugs to give him a “heart attack”. The first guy talked too much about it so the drug supplier repeated the process. Told to me by another former prison cadet.
Fentanyl is in the drugs because it’s cheaper and easier to produce and smuggle. And far more potent. So instead of heroin, you get baking soda and a dollop of fentanyl or something like that.
They are putting into all kinds of pills too. You think you’re buying (illegally) xanax or ecstasy and instead you’re getting talcum powder with fentanyl.
The war on drugs has been an utter disaster. The war on pain medications just made things a whole lot worse. A decade ago it was fairly easy to get a prescription for pain medications and true, many got hooked on them by misusing them. But now you can’t get pain medications very easily and those who were hooked ended up buying street drugs - ultimately fentanyl pressed into tablets, or heroin which is now seemingly mostly fentanyl anyway.
I have heard that old school heroin addicts cannot even get high from real heroin anymore. They need the fentanyl. It’s that potent, addicting, and creates that high a tolerance. And, the wrong dose will kill you. Unmitigated disaster which we created without thinking through the consequences of policy decisions.
And as far as this bill goes, I don’t know what amount of fentanyl will kill a person but I am not in favor of locking up dime bag addicts for possession charges.