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A few years ago someone in the heroin supply chain started kicking up up the product with Fentanyl. I don't believe street-level dealers or even mid-level distributors are responsible for this change in the product. They busted a fentanyl lab in Canada a few weeks ago but prior to that the only plausible (to me) theory I'd heard was that it was getting mixed in at the source in Mexico. Heroin, while dangerous, didn't used to be nearly as deadly as when hot spots of fentanyl started showing up in it. If the crackdown on prescription Hydrocodone, among other RX opiate painkillers, has driven people to heroin, then it has driven people to a potentially much deadlier substitute than it used to be. The DEA could not have been unaware of this eventuality when they pushed forward the new rules on prescribing opiates. It reminds me of when liquor prohibitionists felt that a few (thousand) casualties from consumption of denatured alcohol were a reasonable price to pay to deter drinking. The cynic in me wonders if the DEA felt that a few (hundred thousand) casualties from driving people from pills to spiked heroin were considered acceptable collateral damage. Prosecutors have recently stepped up their own war on heroin dealers by charging them with murder if someone overdoses on the product. I have a theory that if a cheap disposable test kit to identify super-potent (fentanyl laced) heroin were available to dealers and end users that it might just save some lives. There's also the Naloxone factor. It's saving some lives but at $42 a kit is making the producer a bunch of money when perhaps it ought to be fully subsidized. Just a few thoughts on the subject.
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Jan 26, 2016 21:52
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 11:11 |
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