I know that it would be crazy to expect our Federal Gov to address this crisis with a business mindset. Go after the crisis like Walmart or Amazon gets rid of competitors, sell stuff FOR LESS!
Addiction is never going to go away. It is claimed that alcohol causes 100,000/yr deaths, but only about 1% of the deaths are from alcohol toxicity BAL >0.4. One percent is 1,000/yr OD from alcohol. This is probably because alcoholic know the “strength” of their drug of choice and know what their limit is.
The Feds seize how many tons of illegal Fentanyl? Hire a pharma to test, to make sure that it is only Fentanyl. Take the seized Fentanyl and create standardized- unique tablets- with several strengths- and sell them at the Feds net cost. Undercut the street merchants and the Mex cartels. Maybe put the bottles of these opioids in vending machines in highly visible locations to help prevent vandalism. This way, chronic pain pts could get adequate therapy and addicts can get their “fix” and hopefully fewer would OD/poisoned.
Filed under: General Problems
Very basic toxicology: therapeutic index. For most drugs, the therapeutic index is 15-50 for toxicity. For opiates, 10 times usual dose is very close to fatal.
LD50 – the only study on this – that I am aware of – was in rats/mice and I can’t remember which but one of those two LD50 – doing mg/kg was substantially larger than the other. I always wonder how the DEA comes up with a certain percent of illegal fentanyl tabs are lethal. Since it is reported that the Mex cartels are selling Fentanyl acetate – not the FDA approved Fentanyl citrate – and reportedly is half the potency of the latter. On top of that, there is no Fentanyl that is designed to take as a oral tablet. So there is probably no clinical trials to test the potency of Illegal Fentanyl acetate.. I suspect it would be hard to get anyone to volunteer for a LD50 clinical study.
Frankly, at this point I’d seriously consider volunteering for an LD-50 study.
Excellent idea, & various other countries have proved that decriminalizing helps everybody. But it would require (A) this country to change its puritanical view of addiction (tho I notice the Puritans don’t mind alcohol so much, bc they consume it), & (B) somebody rein in the DEA, bc they sure won’t do it themselves. And unfortunately I don’t believe either of those things are going to happen.
If, by the strange chance that the Feds did something like this… what is the war on drugs going to do to justify the 100+ billion/yr we spend on continue to fight this “social war”? Just how many people draw part or all their pay from the war on drugs .. at the city/county/state level and court system, jail/prison system? The lost of all that payroll may be enough reason to not consider doing it.
Exactly.
Intriguing idea.
Probably would work splendidly,
but I would want restrictions like for buying alcohol.
At least an age limit to buy.
there is really not much noise inside than that. No no matter how distasteful it may seem, It’s reality.
Some solutions are less desirable than others, but you just have to “bite the bullet” and move on with the one that would – in this case – potentially save the most lives
Agree !
Bravo