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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday January 28 2018, @04:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the the-gray-web dept.

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


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:58PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @09:58PM (#629599)

    Sometimes, you just can't do anything. We existed for millennia before these drugs were invented.

    You can't just look at the patients and ignore the lives destroyed by drug abuse and conclude that it's a necessary evil when people have existed for so long without it. Especially when there's so little research into the safety and efficacy of these drugs. The opioid crises is mainly the result of providing people with strong pain killers and inadequate abuse prevention.

    At a certain point the quality of life isn't there and it would make more sense to just prescribe ever increasing amounts of pain killers in the case of the terminally ill.

  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday January 28 2018, @11:42PM (5 children)

    by sjames (2882) on Sunday January 28 2018, @11:42PM (#629633) Journal

    The people who abuse drugs and die made their own choice. It's great to try to mitigate that harm, but not at the expense of people who actually do need those drugs. Why should they suffer?

    We did exist before fentanyl. We also had more pain patients commit suicide. Although not strictly legal, we DO prescribe ever greater quantities of pain killer to terminally ill people in pain. It does eventually kill them, but at least they don't die in agony. The official cause of death is inevitably complications of whatever it was that was killing them in the first place. It's not exactly a lie.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @04:51AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @04:51AM (#629702)

      This ignorance is reprehensible. People don't choose to become addicted to substances. People don't just wake up one day and decide that they want to try fentanyl. That's ludicrous.

      What about that woman that died of an overdose just coming into contact with the powder while cleaning up after her son that had just died of a fentanyl overdose? Or the people who will die waiting for EMTs with appropriate training to show up because the police don't know what the powder in the room is?

      And yes, people probably did commit suicide more often due to pain. But, you still haven't justified exposing people to such a dangerous drug just so that the terminally ill can exist for a few more months in barely contained agony.

      It's a sucky situation, but creating new drugs that are so incredibly dangerous that just coming into contact with the powder can lead to a fatal overdose isn't a worthwhile trade.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Monday January 29 2018, @07:11AM (1 child)

        by sjames (2882) on Monday January 29 2018, @07:11AM (#629734) Journal

        There are already many such substances out there. It's just that most of them aren't abused. I personally would advise treating opoid addiction as a medical problem and telling law enforcement to but the hell out. If that was done, then people would likely stick to heroin. I wouldn't call that safe, but it's certainly safer.

        As for waiting for EMTs, I would suggest better police training and equiping them with narcan (it's already being done in some places).

        You might want to note that mere contact is not actually sufficient to OD on fentanyl, even if you have no tolerance. You've fallen for the FUD. You would have to swallow or inhale some of the powder to even get a noticeable dose.

        Fentanyl isn't just for the terminally ill. It is used post-op quite frequently. It is also a last resort for people with chronic pain who might well live for YEARS with some reasonable quality of life as a result. I DARE you to go to such a person and their loved ones and tell them to just eat a gun. I have already told a drug addict that they will eventually die if they use fentanyl.

        There are actually MUCH more powerful opiates out there but they're only used for large animals such as elephants since the human dose is too small to reliably measure out. I'm guessing that if fentonyl actually disappears from the streets (unlikely since people are now manufacturing fentonyl like they manufacture meth), some dinbulb will steal a load of it and kill a lot of people. Actually now that I look, it's already happened [arstechnica.com]. Cut that off and watch people die from krokodil. The answer is treatment so people won't resort to the worst of all options, you'll never make the drugs go away.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @04:27AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2018, @04:27AM (#630186)

          How do you explain the cases where that happened? It's hardly just the incident I referenced earlier, there are other cases. If it's not that potent, then how do you explain people dying of overdoses that weren't doing the drug?

          As far as those loved ones go, I would have absolutely no problem whatsoever telling them that. This whole bullshit about people in that situation being used to rationalize the availability of unnecessarily dangerous drugs without giving equal consideration to the lives that are ultimately lost as a result is reprehensible.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @11:53AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @11:53AM (#629788)

      The people who abuse drugs and die made their own choice. It's great to try to mitigate that harm, but not at the expense of people who actually do need those drugs.

      Until that drug addict comes along and clobbers you in the head to get your wallet so they can satisfy their next hit? You wouldn't give a fuck about either, right?

      Harm reduction is NOT only to the drug user. It's the cost of the entire society that matters in policies like that.

      • (Score: 2) by sjames on Monday January 29 2018, @04:05PM

        by sjames (2882) on Monday January 29 2018, @04:05PM (#629845) Journal

        If proper treatment programs are in place, an addict won't need my wallet to get the next hit. Opiates are actually pretty cheap once you get law enforcement out of it.