SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
With Google, Bitcoins, and USPS, Feds realize it's stupid easy to buy fentanyl
A congressional report released Wednesday lays out just how easy it is for Americans to buy the deadly opioid fentanyl from Chinese suppliers online and have it shipped to them via the government's own postal service. The report also lays out just how difficult the practice will be to stop.
After Googling phrases such as "fentanyl for sale," Senate investigators followed up with just six of the online sellers they found. This eventually led them to 500 financial transaction records, accounting for about $766 million worth of fentanyl entering the country and at least seven traceable overdose deaths.
[...] "Thanks to our bipartisan investigation, we now know the depth to which drug traffickers exploit our mail system to ship fentanyl and other synthetic drugs into the United States," Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio said in a statement. "The federal government can, and must, act to shore up our defenses against this deadly drug and help save lives."
Related: Opioid Addiction is Big Business
Heroin, Fentanyl? Meh: Carfentanil is the Latest Killer Opioid
Tip for Darknet Drug Lords: Don't Wear Latex Gloves to the Post Office
Cop Brushes Fentanyl Off Uniform, Overdoses
Congress Reacts to Reports that a 2016 Law Hindered DEA's Ability to go after Opioid Distributors
Opioid Crisis Official; Insys Therapeutics Billionaire Founder Charged; Walgreens Stocks Narcan
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @06:34PM (7 children)
How many people do you know who stopped smoking because of the images on a cigarette pack?
As a smoker (and only two cigarettes a day at that), I can tell you how it works: you pull a pack out of your pocket and a cigarette out of the pack, all without looking. The pack disappears back in your pocket, and the lighter comes out of your other pocket, all without looking. The first thing you see is the flame at the tip of the cigarette, because you do everything else unconsciously. You never see the packet or any image on it.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday January 28 2018, @07:05PM (1 child)
Actually, IIRC, requiring cigarette packages to not have blatantly distinctive packaging did reduce the amount of cigarettes sold in Austrailia? New Zealand? Something like that. Granted this is different from requiring a skull and bones on the front of the package, but it is an argument against your argument. (OTOH, I don't know *how* effective it was, or even whether there was any long term effect. And it may have operated by reducing the advantage for manufacturers to advertise.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday January 29 2018, @01:00AM
Yes [health.gov.au] a whooping "0.55 percentage points between December 2012 and September 2015" from the "smokers prevalence". More precisely:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday January 28 2018, @07:36PM (3 children)
As a multi-decade former smoker, I can also tell you that sometimes "how it works" is that you are bored when you happen to decide to smoke a cigarette, and you not only read but carefully examine every detail of the pack, the lighter, the unsmoked cigarettes, the one you are smoking, etc.
(Score: 0, Troll) by frojack on Sunday January 28 2018, @07:44PM (2 children)
As a never-smoker, I look at both you and the AC as utterly insane individuals.
But I bet you are both in favor of free government supplied health care.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:35PM
Smoking was not an activity arrived at by an excess of sanity on my part. I did finally stop.
Well, sure, if a government somewhere is sitting on a huge free supply of health care, then I am all for them releasing it.
I suspect not, however.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @12:35AM
Fuck you and your high puppy you are riding on.
On a second thought, I'll let the puppy alone and fuck you twice. With a jackhammer.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday January 29 2018, @11:38AM
sudo mod me up