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posted by Fnord666 on Friday December 14 2018, @12:23AM   Printer-friendly
from the death-dust dept.

Fentanyl is the deadliest drug in America, CDC confirms

Fentanyl is now the most commonly used drug involved in drug overdoses, according to a new government report. The latest numbers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics say that the rate of drug overdoses involving the synthetic opioid skyrocketed by about 113% each year from 2013 through 2016.

The number of total drug overdoses jumped 54% each year between 2011 and 2016. In 2016, there were 63,632 drug overdose deaths.

[...] In 2016, over 18,000 overdose deaths involved fentanyl, and 16,000 fatalities were due to heroin.

China recently agreed to reclassify fentanyl as a controlled substance to curb sales to the U.S. Will that agreement hold given ongoing trade war tensions?

Also at CBS.

Related: U.S. Life Expectancy Continues to Decline Due to Opioid Crisis
Senate Investigators Google Their Way to $766 Million of Fentanyl
"Synthetic Opioids" Now Kill More People than Prescription Opioids in the U.S.
120 Pounds (54 kg) of Fentanyl Seized in Nebraska
U.S. House of Representatives Passes Opioid Legislation; China Will Step Up Cooperation
The Dutch Supply Heroin Addicts With Dope and Get Better Results Than USA
U.S. Opioid Deaths May be Plateauing


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Friday December 14 2018, @01:19AM (1 child)

    by edIII (791) on Friday December 14 2018, @01:19AM (#774225)

    That's idiocy in this case though. Fentanyl is already super strong, that's the problem. This is stuff so deadly, that a bucket in your back seat can take out all of New York. I don't consider it a purely DEA issue, and is also a damned bioweapon that the Feds should be tracking.

    Fentanyl belongs in one place only; Hospitals. That's for very controlled usage in pain management situations. I might want to be injected with it, if I got stung by a Bullet Ant. That's how strong Fentanyl is. If we insist on it being sold, it needs to be in very low doses, and not OTC. Cheap, or expensive is also irrelevant, as it's already very cheap to produce. What we need is prescription only for it, and safety measures against over-dosing, which is extremely easy via recreational drugs.

    You said what would really happen too, "scaring the users, or by killing them". I'm not sure genocide through inaction is the greatest idea here. The populations are bigger than you think, and not everybody taking heroin started through bad judgment. So many, many, many of them started through pain management under the care of a doctor, then progressed over 10 years to heroin. I've personally helped with a case where the patient was being given such large does of Oxycontin, it was causing other problems. This person was very wise though, because they said they refused to every try heroin. Even though that was exactly what some others were saying. That's a fucked position to be in. The doctor's can no longer help, you're labeled a criminal almost trying to obtain drugs in a highly regulated environment, and you're in real pain all the time. I can understand and forgive somebody in that position for trying heroin, since a path with opiates always results in it. There's the biggest dirty secret of all; Opiates suck for long term pain management.

    There's a nasty conspiracy in this country to push Oxycontin for Big Pharma, and it has resulted in a lot of victims out there that have no choice but to push ever higher now in the opiates category. All of it under a doctor's supervision too. I don't know the percentage of heroin users that started from pain management gone wrong, but it's not trivial or negligible either.

    It's too simplistic to treat all possible users of fentanyl as unsophisticated junkies with poor character.

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  • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Friday December 14 2018, @01:47AM

    by Snotnose (1623) on Friday December 14 2018, @01:47AM (#774233)

    This is stuff so deadly, that a bucket in your back seat can take out all of New York.

    You say that like it's a bad thing. I'm so sick of 1/2" of snow on the east coast results in a full 30 minutes of national news coverage, yet a flood or wildfire on the west coast might get Al Roker saying in passing "and look at what's happening on the west coast".

    / Sandy Eggin since 1963

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