1y ago

Chinese crackdown on fentanyl could lead to worse drugs filling the vaccum

www.vice.com China Will Crack Down on Fentanyl Sent to the US. Worse Drugs Could Fill the Vacuum.

The U.S. already pressured China to ban fentanyl once. Supply grew exponentially afterwards.

President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed that China would crack down on the production and exporting of fentanyl and the precursor chemicals used to make it, according to media reports.

But while Biden is painting the agreement as a win that will “save lives”, drug policy experts told VICE News they’re skeptical the measure will curb the overdose crisis—and it may make the drug supply worse.

Biden and Xi met Wednesday in San Francisco, where both leaders were in town for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. According to the New York Times, China will go after the exporting of illicit fentanyl into the U.S. and the manufacturing of precursor chemicals, which are being used to make fentanyl and smuggle it into the country from Mexico.

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Oh no. Better keep that Fenty coming, or else other drugs might take its place.
- I mean clearly there’s systemic issues driving people to seek this stuff, just removing fenty without addressing those means they’ll just seek out other things. Realistically we should be legalizing the safer stuff (psychedelics, MDMA, etc) that isn’t as damaging or addicting and raising living standards to combat the harder stuff but in our current state where weed isn’t even legal federally and it’s all treated the same more or less addicts and ODs on hard drugs are going to be the outcome.
  
  I agree with what yr saying but it all makes me think you've never tried, whether on purpose or not, fentanyl.
  Fent...makes you absolutely removed when yr on it, but when you are, you are transported to the warm busom of God til you snap out of it. You don't care about anything, hunger, cold, any trauma, any worries, any stressors. It all melts away for that short amount of time.
  Besides the physical addiction sending a need as strong as thirst in the desert, that reprieve from pain is addicting all it's own. A good majority of people actively using and seeking out fent assume they'll die from it, and they're fine with that.
  I've never been on the ban drugs train, I think the subjective exploration of consciousness and meta-reality are incredibly important for people, be that in personal mental health and growth, artistically and spiritually. At the same time, I think letting Shamans control the flow isn't a terrible idea, but if implemented should also come with an end date after society comes to terms with itself. I think terminal patients should be given as much DMT as they want for as long as they want it, it's like making practice runs at the other side. I think ibogaine should be widely available for resetting addictions back to null, but that should prob be a guided trip, same thing with ayehuasca.
  But fent shouldn't be allowed outside a medical setting. The opioid receptor is devil in a red dress; dance with the devil, devil don't change, devil changes you.
  In a kinder society we would prescribe meds that turn off pain receptors, like the ones developed from jellyfish and other neurotoxins, but that would prob be stipulated with forced, active restraint bed rest. We don't use those now because pain let's us know when we push too far, otherwise we'd just keep reinjuring ourselves. But fent gives that absence of pain too, and coupled with the i-cant-stress-how-extreme-cravings people will look at the work necessary to holistically end their pains and just say, nah man. At the cost of everything. Parents abandoning children. Cuz once their high, they don't care. So they just plan to stay forever high.
  I'm all for banning fent.
  It's the embodiment of my second favorite malaphor "build a man a fire and he's warm for a night, but set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life"
  
  Fent…makes you absolutely removed when yr on it, but when you are, you are transported to the warm busom of God til you snap out of it. You don’t care about anything, hunger, cold, any trauma, any worries, any stressors. It all melts away for that short amount of time.
  That may be true recreationally, but I had it in the ER when I had a kidney stone and all it did was take away the pain and make me drowsy.
  
  The difference is need. Itll work the pain first, what's leftover will work towards the high
  Good health/no pain= to the moon 🚀
  Also, I'm happy it helped you. It can be fantastic in a clinical setting.
  
  Yeah both my wife and I don't get much effect from opiates when we are prescribed them and don't get how folks can become addicted to them. I think different folks just react differently. I guess we are lucky to have the meh effect from them.
  
  I was glad it took away the pain, but yeah, they don't do anything for me that would get me addicted to them. The constipation is the worst part.
  
  Are you or your spouse redheads by chance? People with red hair have an inherent genetic tolerance.
  
  I wonder if it's the higher percentage of Neanderthal DNA.
  Smokers also require more pain meds, not just the opiates but the -caines as well.
  I have strawberry blonde hair and smoke. Any pain meds and me is like, 'turn it all the way up Dentist' or 'yea, Vicodin does nothing. That bottle is like 2 doses.'
  I landed me a debilitating repetitive injury from work, and besides taking a lateral move, I needed pain meds just to function. The pain would spread from my shoulder/back/arm up my neck into my brain. I'm talking rapid onset migraines where I'd go blind.
  First time, I was driving.
  Not fun.
  I didn't know that could even happen. Regardless, I needed help to work, then without them Id withdraw and be unable to work. Right down the slippery slope I went. Got to a point where I just said no more, idc what happens, took 10days off work, sat at home with 30 boxes of donuts, various one step meals, 20 gallons of choc milk and otter pops. Told myself, and everyone else, i was sick. I refused to make any decisions besides what to eat that was in the building for the entire time as I considered my mind compromised and sus.
  I am exceptionally willful tho and can compartmentalize like it's the ADHD Olympics. Results will vary. I do not recommended the experience. 0/10. Dengue fever in a foreign land where I speak 0.5% of the language was more pleasant.
  
  What are your thoughts on maintenance therapy and medical detox, i.e. with Suboxone?
  
  Honestly? It has a place of it's the last resort, if for whatever reason, a person's circumstances necessitate their constant presence and decision making ability.
  Like, if there's no family the kids can go stay with, or if you're the last nuclear engineer/ER Dr./bar pilot within 1000 miles and you're already on call 24/7.
  If you're presence/agency/rationality is more essential than your immediate health - and those examples could very well be - then, if you're able to compartmentalize esoteric you from physical you and cede control of the process to the prescribing doctor, ie, you just shut up, take the discomfort, ignore your brains opinion about anything that has to do with it and carry on, then methadone might be an option for you.
  If you can in anyway manuever your life to avoid methadone, I 110% suggest you do that.
  Withdrawal from methadone can last 6 months to a year. Withdrawal from opiates is a matter of weeks, not months. With ibogaine that's reduced to ~16hrs. Ibogaine is curiously illegal, and rated schedule 1 (no medical value, nothing to see here; look away) in America.
  Sigh. Deep breaths. Here we go
  It's crucial to know that even tho they are within the same family; Vicodin/Percocet withdrawal ≠ heroin withdrawal ≠ fentanyl withdrawal. The shit is exponential, I am not exaggerating.
  One acre of poppies yields 1 kg of opium. It will take 100 acres of poppies to yield 1 kg of morphine. Expounding;
  1acre poppies= 1kg Opium 100kg Opium=1kg Morphine 100kg Morphine= 1kg heroin 100kg heroin = 1kg fentanyl
  Withdrawal symptoms/intensity are directly proportional. I know this, anecdotally. Your brain in withdrawal will pull out every trick, every rationality it can grasp to convince you to get more of w/e. "Immediate-needs you" is attacking "Overall you"...or COO v CEO, sous v exec chef, quartermaster v captain. You are caught in the middle of a war between your brain and your body. You, what you would call you, your consciousness, is emergent from both. You are not your brain. Your brain is not seperate from your body either, even tho the ego sells convincingly, they both need each other. Recovery requires setting the ego aside ( {DEEP BREATH, HOLD ON!} which it absolutely does not want to do, it will do ANYTHING before it even allows itself to be back burnered, on a fucking timer even. In it's original, unadulterated form it is insessently needy and unrelentingly demanding. A tick is less demanding and it's literally sucking your blood. This is why ego death is so transformative. It's not that you changed, cuz it didn't you are still you, obviously, it's that you can now exist outside parameters defined by the ego. It fucking feels like you're dying too, the ego sells convincingly, but then *pop, * you're thru. And you're still you. Just with less weight. And why was that so hard? WTF self? Life is fucking weird).
  Phew...
  I'd argue, bite the bullet and reap what youve sown and get it done with. Cold turkey is like an old neighborhood beat down while structured is a 364 day jail sentence with 5 years probation - but it doesn't require "esoteric you" to reconcile yourself. The main problem with that, to me, is no matter where you go, there you are. You can't run from yourself. Many have tried. I'm not aware of any that have survived the attempt unscathed.
  Now we can chemically synthesize fent so the hundreds of millions of poppy acreage, known as Afghanistan, just lost a whole lot of its value. ...notice how our military isn't there anymore. Weird, huh?
  
  Thanks for writing this up. This is the kind of comment I used to be on the lookout for on Reddit, so this is making Lemmy feel like it's going to be able to fill that old niche for me.
  Excellent way with words!
  
  Sorry if I wasn’t clear, I 100% get trying to reduce fentanyl my response was more a complaint that we seem to always do these half measures but yes trying to get fentanyl gone is a good thing. I’ve done many drugs but thankfully never fent.
- Joe Biden: Cures cancer.
  Media: "How are we going to feed Joe Biden's surplus population?"
- And suddenly everyone learns about carfentanyl
- They have shittier, cheaper drugs to pump tbh. Various vice documentaries show how redacted ass dealers mix in whatever they can get their hands on. The way third world countries do their drugs might come to the US, and I don’t think anyone has yet to realize how cushy the drug scene really is up here.
  Recent documentary covers a drug called Tusi, which is meant to sound like 2C, as in 2C-B. It is everything except 2C-B. A mixture of fentanyl meth ketamine and whatever they feel like on that day. People absolutely love it. Do they care about what’s really in it? No.
  If you want to end your life and turn it into abhorrent trash, what is stopping you from walking downtown and finding a cool cat in the alley selling horse?
  Personally think the war on drugs is fucked, when you’re talking about stoner Doug. No one deserves the butt of a rifle for pot. But hey, I don’t think anyone minds when the local fent dealer disappears.
  
  Hear me out guys.
  As a society, or the one we want at least, we’re supposed to care for each other.
  I personally think they should ramp up the war on opiates. Mass terror on those who enable the illicit use of them. All it does is kill our communities and stifle the flourishing ones.
  Weed was proof that the war on drugs was trash. We know that unlike opiates, smoking pot doesn’t completely reinvent your synapses into a drug seeking rat brain. So we all just collectively decided to throw the whole program away.
  Evidently you can’t stop it from coming in through the borders but I feel like we should enable the seeking of domestic sellers. Just to put them in a nice square box, away from hurting others.
  
  I would think we would learn from the first war on drugs. Support of addicts yes, try to police it away no. Counselors not cops.
  
  I am sorry but there is no counseling for the crazies that have eroded their brain away with drugs. There is only prevention for future generations.
  There’s no price you could pay me to rehabilitate the people that throw feces and yell at passerby’s. Too much risk.
  
  A big reason addicts turn to street drugs is because of the healthcare systems “blacklist” for drug abusers. Fixing that would help the ones that became addicted because of pain relief false advertising, get the help they need.
  But what do we do about the people that have reached the point of no return?
  The conversation changes dramatically when you have seen the depravity inside a State of California Public Restroom.
  
  The people who are that severely damaged by drugs* are a small percentage. I've only seen a handful who got that bad because of drugs (I'm a professional in the field). Most addicts can benefit from appropriate care and could become functional members of society again if they had proper support - which our system grossly lacks.
  *Most cases of persistent psychosis aren't drug-induced; most of those throwing feces have psychosis from some other cause, which can also be treated with varying levels of success. Drug-induced psychosis is most of the time transient, and subsides as the drug wears off.
  
  so what the solution. lock em up. kill them?
  
  No mate. We need to have places dedicated for the permanent care of these people. As in live-in psych wards. I’m tired of seeing streets covered in needles and homeless people shitting in broad daylight.
  Some people consider this as locking them up. But what else? You want to fight over who gets the park bench spot with the rabid man?
  
  I mean we used to have psychiatric facilities but due to abuses they just sorta got rid of them (well and the lower taxes god) instead of regulating them better.
  
  We got rid of them in the name of small government.
  It was the Neo-liberal takeover ushered in under Reagan (and has been every president since) that shuttered the doors.
  A constant, soul sucking feature of Neo-liberal society is it's refusal to invest or reinvest into itself, choosing to extract as much wealth out of the working class as possible as fast as possible - short of rioting.
  Its a funny thing from this crowd, they say we should run the government like a business but they never say what KIND of business. A non-profit? A ma and pop?...silence.
  Infrastructure, Education, Medicine all have a positive Return On Investment (ROI), which means that the smart business decision is to pay for it all, ensuring it's thorough, properly done, and to best practices.
  But that is not what neo-libs mean. They mean short term profit corporations where responsible parties go unpunished.
  The literal worst system you can imagine.
  
  There’s some great YouTube videos about a Mexican forced rehabilitation group that picks up people that are fucking up in life and humiliates them and forces them into rehab.
  Later on they seem to be liking sobriety and appreciative, so I don’t see what’s wrong with picking up a couple of junkies nodding out in public, giving them narcan to ruin their day, and then kick the living recovery into them, then force them to eat nothing but beans and rice for 3 months. Then keep them on a short leash.
  It’s full of camaraderie and think that it’s a good starting point for those that couldn’t find purpose elsewhere.
  
  A couple of junkies who are nodding out in public still have the same rights to freedom and self determination as anyone else. You're just advocating for more of the same war on drugs, brutalising marginalised people. After so many years it should be obvious that shit does not work.
  
  Sorry for being a bit of a cunt. It’s easy being an armchair superhero. Hopefully I can learn from this as it’s a problem that I’m severely interested in fixing.
  
  Good on you. The world needs more of this
  Be proud of this. don't lose this, don't let the world beat it out of you.
  
  Did you watch the video? It’s an AA program that works. Yeah we used to have places to send them but as mentioned they were full of abuse. We need simple people treating other people. No ego tripping maniacs that want to test on patients. Therefore no psychiatrists. Just a drug abuse and misuse specialist.
  I honestly don’t know about the determination part pops.
  Their brain is determined for more dope that’s for sure, it’s not magic. They simply made their brain into a different structure by chronically abusing drugs. The blood brain barrier becomes shit because heroin rips through it, no more special chemicals like oxytocin or the feeling ones like endorphins. A husk of your former self.
  This can be fixed but it’s a long and arduous process and may I remind you that we have reached epidemic levels of addiction and abuse. That’s a lot of people.
  War on drugs is sending them to jail and not even fixing the problem. If you have a problem with talking mean to crackheads to get them to get into your van and into a treatment facility then I have a feeling we’re gonna be here for a long time.
  Edit: And yeah, I honestly believe that the person who has no sympathy for his fellow citizens and outright sells them what will eventually end their life through addiction and bring pain to their family should just disappear and be put in some hole. Cause a big percent of the time they’re lying to customers and just putting fent in the removed to purposefully get them hooked or make others hear about their potent product.
  Idk humanity took a wrong turn, and everyone is on the defensive about it instead of wanting to fix it because it seems kinda shitty.
  If the people I am talking about don’t care to not sleep next to their own feces pile, or walk around covered in piss, only have 2 teeth, use needles found on the sidewalk, why should we care about how we get them to comply?
  
  Not quite the same but NPR interviewed a guy who used to basically live in this open air drug market in california and he got incarcerated and he said it saved his life by forcing him to go cold turkey.
  
  4NEX0

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