Not a big Jelly Roll fan,but a good video on the fentanyl crises
 

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Why does the United States still have a high rate of illicit drug activities, despite having the numerous laws and a decades long War on Drugs?

Far too much of this ↓ being made by far too many people...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1705369506.jpg

So money. Consumerism. Capitalism and greed… or therefore the illusion of it and hence the need for opiates(for those to escape the failures of their lives and country)…

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1705373172.jpg

Maybe I was naive but when I started my newest Job last summer, I came face to face with how prevalent drug use is in this country.

I expected pot to be the most used in the patients I was seeing, it is not. Cocaine, fentanyl and heroin are.

I mistakenly thought cocaine was a more expensive option so wouldn't be seen that often. Wrong. 80% of the patients I see test positive for cocaine. The oldest, I've seen, was 80 years old; the youngest 16 years old. I've seen people who live in government housing and people who live in upper middle class areas of town.

Fentanyl is cheap. It is mixed with the cocaine (which lowers the price), so if someone's tox screen shows cocaine, most of the time, it will show fentanyl also.

That testimony JellyRoll gave was powerful. Sadly, it will change nothing.

Thank you for your first hand testimony. May I ask what you do? I'm simply curious if that skews the number of pot users you encounter. I too would expect pot to be #1.
Most everyone I know, but me, smokes pot. I wish I could claim I didn't care, but I've ditched multiple guys because all they wanted to do was hang out and get high, ugh!

I lost a cousin to heroin back in the 60's and it devastated the extended family. Back then there was virtually no awareness and no treatment so Richie just wasted away.

More peripherally I've seen huge changes in what has been my favorite playground for decades which is West Virginia. There are small towns that I used as stopping points / base camp that have nearly disappeared due to drugs. I haven't been back in 5 years so maybe it's gotten better but the last time I was there it was very sad.

I heard a long interview with the author Sam Quinones a while back. He has done a deep dive on the current drug crisis. How the drugs are made, sold, etc. The book is Th.e Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth

He has an interesting perspective on what we see as the last group of homeless, who essentially can't be housed, despite having beds at shelters and supported apartments available. Their drug use and paranoia prevent them from following any sort of process to get help.

We've seen this locally with folks camping in below freezing weather despite beds being available at shelters. The "housing first" model is failing because the drug use issue is being ignored by the "experts".

https://a.co/d/fuWbNcC

what changes should be made? what changes can be made?

that's the question right? you cannot punish these folks into compliance, we know that doesn't work, we tried it for 40 years. you cant take something away from people who have nothing, and pretend it helps.

Maybe try removing the profit motive from the cartels? IDK if across the board decriminalization is effective or even possible but hell it seems to be the only thing we haven't tried.

I don't think you can stop the supply. And reducing supply drives up prices and profits.

When you can't stop the supply, and you can't reduce the demand, then perhaps there is no viable answer.

I am a nurse who works in organ donation. I evaluate patients who are dying to see if their organs could be donated.

I don’t have an answer. I’m sure everyone here has seen the effects of addiction.

I will share a story from nursing school: I was assigned a pt who had been in the hospital for several months recovering from an abscess on their spine which caused paralysis (this is quite common with iv drug use). They were very open with their story. Along with their spouse, they progressed from pot to oxycodone to heroin. They made the choice to sell their home and live on the streets to fund their habit. Their 3 children were estranged due to the drug use. Their spouse died from an OD while they were in the hospital. My patient had every intention of returning to their drug use after leaving the hospital. I was told on several occasions money from the sale of the home was still available.

Even though, this patient had lost their home, spouse and children, they didn’t want to change their drug use.

That made me more acutely aware I have no solution

Thank you for your posts on this subject.

I finally got a friend of mine into recovery, not cocaine related, and it was the hardest thing I have ever done: I had to walk away in anger so he could walk into a better life.

Congress passed a bill earlier this year that put "sanctions" on the cartels. It supposedly makes it harder for them to to launder the money and a makes it easier to catch and convict them. We'll see. "Sanctions" only work for as long as the dollar has value to them. With the BRICS countries working hard to overturn the US dollar as the world's reserve currency and the usefulness of cyber money, sanctions in US dollars is looking less viable as a tool. When the cartels no longer care whether they have US dollars or not, we are pretty much helpless.

I don't think criminalizing users is going to help anything. Attempted murder charges and long prison sentences for anyone caught selling fentanyl-laced substances would get current dealers off the streets, but with suppliers pushing product and willing buyers they will be replaced quickly.

Good that she was honest with you about her intentions. My ex made noises about wanting to get off of prescription drugs. Five years and over $150,000 later in repeated recovery and rehab I finally realized she only wanted to go through the motions of quitting. Had she been honest about her devotion to drugs over me we would have been divorced years earlier and I would have saved several tens of thousands of dollars on recovery and rehab.
It doesn't help that a lot of the recovery/rehab facilities are just there to take tax payer's money from clients who were court-ordered into it. Judges are so damn gullible. "Oh yes your honor, I do, I do want to kick my habit - I swear. Thank you your honor, for sending me to rehab instead of jail." It would save time and money if the judges turned them loose.

The market is only there because we allow it. If we focus on rehabilitation instead of incarceration...

If the 'war on drugs' was worth anything, we would be hunting down the cartels like isis, Saddam, or Bin Laden... Instead, it is quite obvious that the corruption has ahold of every aspect of the government. We saw this with 2022 primary in AZ. Allegations that the cartels bought the Governor's election (which reeked of corruption). Further, the laws are only enforced upon the competitors to the cartels. Let alone the wide open border that the feds seem to be pushing..

Then I have the little monkey in back of my head thinking about the CIA and the cocaine epidemic of the 80's... The fact that United States has the most laws, and the most incarcerated... The point isn't to fix this issue. It's greed, power, influence and a whole bunch of money... All at the expense of the citizens of this great country.

That's comical. Sanctions are the virtue signaling from the west. The cartels are ran on extreme brutality. Cartels are a virus, prison won't do much besides forced labor for the privatized prisons (that is if they can stay in general population long enough not to kill more Americans)...

What was earmarked in that bill would be my question.

folks are being poisoned. ....... not the traditional "overdose".

a study here? almost 80% of the addicted women in the DTES (dntn eastside) Vancouver - were sexually abused as infants. essentially zero mental health facilities for the downtrodden. it's ****ed.

Singapore has a nearly zero illegal drug problem. How so? Death penalty for dealing.

(edit) I know...will never happen here. Perhaps the libertarian approach...let the addicts kill themselves.

That's the problem. Many users are pretty good at managing not to die. That's for amateurs. Users cost us a lot of money.

neither of these are true: https://singaporelegaladvice.com/law-articles/what-are-singapores-laws-on-drug-consumption/#:~:text=It%20is%20an%20offence%20under,fine%20of% 20%2420%2C000%20or%20both.

https://www.thecabinsingapore.com.sg/blog/despite-tough-penalties-drug-abuse-in-singapore-is-still-on-the-increase/



the obvious solution to me ... is we need to make a 'good' life worth living. because i think a lot of people are straight faced looking at the world, and going ... why would i care? no one else does. esp when caring is so much work, and all caring does is bring you more work.

its not that being a homeless drug addict is so appealing ... its that not being one is so much work. its easy to sit here on our porsches, in our homes that we own, and forget that most of the country doesn't live like this. they live pay check to pay check, and working their asses off doesnt actually get them anywhere. there is no merit in our supposed meritocracy.

and you know, i dont have a good counter point to that argument.

I agree. I also think this is a looming issue for a lot of people. AI will fill the need for a plethora of jobs currently filled by engineers, lawyers, and even doctors. What do we do, as a society, when all these people are idle?

(I know, AI couldn't possibly replace 'you'. You're brilliant.
That's exactly what the guys doing manual spreadsheets back in the 70's told me.)

I would say "bring you more worthlessness."
There is a book, "Glass Houses" about what a hedge fund did to the city of Lancaster, Ohio. Anchor Hocking glass works was the economic anchor for the city. Generations of Lancaster's children grew up to work there, or were sent off to college for a better life on the money mom and dad made there. A hedge fund bought the company, bankrupted it, and suddenly a generation were told they weren't needed. "Find something else," they were told. They did - drugs and indolence.

yup. we are told we live in a meritocracy, where if you work hard, good things will happen.

and we don't. we just don't.

and we grow up, and watch the richest people in the world doing the dumbest possible things, and we watch nepotism trump merit every time, and we watch how the world problems aren't complicated, but the solutions inconvenience a few very rich and powerful people and thus will never get fixed ... and you go .... why? why would i opt into this system?

its nice, being born into an upper middle class family, and fairly easy to be, upper middle class for me. but if you weren't born into the upper middle class, or even into the middle class ... why would you do it?

and i think we are watching an increasingly large number of people, basically just opting out of the system .becasue the system doesn't care about them, so why should they care about the system?

in the world we have, where merit means so little to the powerful ... why would opt in and try to merit your way up a system that doesnt care about merit?

It is a very complex problem indeed. America's insatiable appetite for drugs is what
keeps the cartels in business. The cartels and violence associated with them in Mexico
and latin America is one of the big reasons for the influx of people fleeing those countries
and creating the problems we have at the border. The two are inexplicably linked. We need
to take some responsibility for our part. No demand for drugs, the cartels would be minimized.
I know wishful thinking. The problem is so big that there is no easy answer. We know what
doesn't work. What might ? I also thought Jelly Rolls comments were powerful, yet as he
described his own wife is an addict. Once someone goes down that path it just seems to
take a miracle to reverse it.

One of the points Quinones makes in his book is that the "modern" form of meth, and also fentanyl, are immediately addictive or deadly. There is no turning back for many.

I worked in social services, trying to help people on SSI/SSDI and vets on disability, manage their benefits. The goal was to make sure the money went to the right place. Rent and food. It was in many ways a futile effort. The most depressing days were when parents brought their kids in to sign up as they were exiting high school.

I grew up on Vancouver Island… it may still be the pot capital of Canada. Most kids in my high school smoked it, so did their parents. It was very accessible, free if you knew the right crowd.

On Facebook, nearly every month, I see posts from old friends who still live there grieving the loss of ‘so and so’… fentanyl. That is a place where there was next to 0 opportunities for those who stayed. I can go into any bar there and see someone from high school that I haven’t seen in 32 years and pick up a conversation as if I just went to the pisser.

In a rare occurrence, I somewhat agree with cockerpunk on this. People, without opportunity, turn to drugs instead of brightening their futures by getting out of a bad economic situation or getting an education and moving on… it’s easier.

I had fentanyl 10 days ago at the hospital when they temporarily reset my ankle. It’s pretty wonderful stuff, I can see why people would want that type of high. That being said, I have 3 pill bottles in my house with Percocet, OxyContin, and Hydromorphone from my knee surgery and my recent ankle surgery… I got off them as soon as possible (1.5-2 days).

I really need to get this garbage out of my house but I keep it in case I need it for a bad farm or hiking injury in the back country.

With respect to Jellyroll… I am not a huge fan of his music but between this interview and a recent interview with Storme Warren, I have tremendous respect for the man. He spent a big chunk of his life in prison and has truely reformed… largely because he wanted to. Respect to him.

One other thing I will add is that it is my perception that Americans living in areas with poor economic conditions have the US military as a genuine opportunity whereas in Canada, it’s not the same… yes any kid can sign up but the opportunities seem to be fewer and less rewarding. I could be wrong.

The authorities have given up on that front. They're simply throwing up their hands, and instead, are doing things like pushing legislation here in CA requiring that NARCAN be available in schools for students who OD.

To me, this is basically admitting that they're simply powerless when it comes to controlling the flow of drugs into this country.

Good Example. Very common. A big company or corporation buys smaller companies
to pad their portfolio. Companies that are providing jobs and service's to there local
community. Years later some CEO decides that, it's no longer relevant or a good fit.
Shuts the company down. A loss of jobs and services to the community. Combine this
with huge corporations going into communities across the country and paying cash
for residential homes and property, undercutting families trying to purchase those
same homes. Both are factors creating homelessness, drug use and people just giving
up. Alot of this started during the 2008- 2010 recession. Banks foreclosing on homes
and corporations going in with tons of money scooping up homes ,developments and
property. This, along with other excellent points from everyone who has posted to this thread, has contributed to the problem. Money,profiteering and greed running roughshod over average people, with no means or resources to fight back. No wonder
people self medicate.

Close to 75% of our non-health related cases in the ME's office are drug ODs.

The public really has no clue how bad it is.

.

Having seen users/addicts from all walks of life, most of whom arrived in that way primarily because they started as "curious" (aka bored), I'm not sure there is any putting the addiction genie back in the bottle. No different than anyone who starts smoking today, there is no saving people from themselves. The information is all there but people seem to think reality applies to others but not them. An unbelievable number of people today want to live in denial of reality. Whatevs but don't drag other people down when reality wins again.

They don’t see it. Not their problem. It’s No longer taboo with how the pharmaceutical companies hooked Americans on opiates as non addictive (purdue pharma)… then you have the knee jerk reaction to cut off the drugs, that forces that market right into the cartels lap…
Btw the blue m30 pills that the cartels bring across the border wholesale for $1.00-2.00 a pill. Very cheap fentanyl. Very cheap.

It’s cheaper to educate people so they can create their own opportunities than the cost on our medical system dealing with the fallout of these OD’s.

Good point and very true. I believe the statistics on the GI Bill was that for every dollar
the government spent there was a $7.00 return on it. Higher education and more
opportunity's.

What percent of those people want to be educated? Drug addicts cross over the entire spectrum of society. Simply being educated is no guarantee of success. Especially once someone is addicted.

This thread makes me sad.

I think it’s kinda like the ‘get your daughter a horse so she won’t have time for boys’ theory. It works for most.

I know one thing AI can't be allowed to or won't be able to help with is addictive behavior.
God help us all if it does