> “The tranq dope literally eats your flesh,” she said. “It’s self-destruction at its finest.”
> She unrolled a bandage from elbow to palm. Beneath patches of blackened tissue, exposed white tendons and pus, the sheared flesh was hot and red. To stave off xylazine’s excruciating withdrawal, she said, she injects tranq dope several times a day. Fearful that injecting in a fresh site could create a new wound, she reluctantly shoots into her festering forearm.
> The only person who would let her use a cellphone was a guy whose arm and leg had been amputated because of his tranq wounds. He was still injecting into his leg stump.
If a drug that literally turns you into a melting, oozing zombie with flesh dripping off your bones doesn't make you find a different drug - not even quit, I mean, find a different drug to get fucked up on - I think that person is suicidal. This is some morbid shit right here.
> If a drug that literally turns you into a melting, oozing zombie with flesh dripping off your bones doesn't make you find a different drug - not even quit, I mean, find a different drug to get fucked up on - I think that person is suicidal.
I think you have not even the most basic understanding of addiction, or (perhaps most relevant to this case) specifically withdrawal. If you are addicted, you can’t simply choose a substitute, and particularly you can’t avoid withdrawal from one drug just by choosing another, except for some very special cases.
Suicidal is probably too strong a term. Addiction is a total mind f#*k because you can be totally rational, full of regret walking home from the ER and then think “hey a cold beer would be really delicious right now”. Then coming out of a blackout later like “hey, what happened?”
It’s more of a head space where you don’t care whether or not you are alive tomorrow, and I definitely shouldn’t be doing this, but that’s a problem for tomorrow.
If there’s even a brief moment of contemplation it is no match for the physical withdrawal that takes over from your rational mind, like a totally different person carjacking your your body at gunpoint with a sensible plan to save the day. The negotiation lasts less than one second.
Recovery is not easy. It’s obviously a lot more complicated than “don’t do that, dummy!”, considering that message combined with gangrene loses the argument with the carjacker nine times out of ten.
Someone doing this stuff isn't thinking of the endgame any more than an alcoholic is thinking about cirrhosis. They just want to get high. They're not at the opiod buffet picking their fave. They're doing the best stuff their dealer has that they can afford.
> a drug that literally turns you into a melting, oozing zombie with flesh dripping off your bones
Reminds me of Krokodil [1].
That said, I just finished listening to an episode of Radiolab [2] describing how unsubstantiated claims about fentanyl causing overdoses through contact may have triggered episodes of mass psychogenic illness [3]. So I'm inclined to take these gory images with a grain of salt, e.g. these may be a wounds that were neglected due to drug use versus unavoidably caused by it.
Important to remember that the alternative to shooting up is, often, to be cold, and miserable, alone, on the street, with no sleep.
One possibility potentiates the other.
Horrifically, you could even think of drug use as an attempt to adapt to loss of housing.
The backdrop for urban drug use, here in Vancouver, is a profound housing crisis and shortage, and a complete, thoroughgoing failure on the part of multiple levels of government to do anything about it.
Tho photos of the damage are incredible. It was tricky to find a source I trust not to exaggerate too much for ideological reasons but I think a professional dermatology association has the right incentives towards accuracy:
I've known a few addicts and recovering addicts over the years. Telling them to "just stop, you're hurting yourself" does about as much good as telling someone suffering from depression to "just be happy, you're hurting yourself".
Throwaway to share some thoughts from my first hand experience.
They're not suicidal. Addiction is a pathological state. I've been an addict, with some long periods of sobriety and/or healthy moderation, since my late teens and I'm in my 40s now. Opioids is what got me started but it doesn't matter the substance. They change. At the moment I'm trying really hard to get clean from a serious cocaine and ketamine addiction.
I'm also a successful business owner and CEO, I'm Very High Net Worth, I have a loving partner and a loving family. I had no significant traumas growing up. I have access to the highest level of care possible. Between my psychiatrist and my addiction specialist and all the various coaches and providers I spend hours a week working on this problem.
And yet I cannot stop taking drugs. I cannot stop by will alone. Having been through the ups and downs so many times I know I have to attack this problem from like 20 different angles 20 different times before I'll stop. I've been through this so many times now.
I went to rehab a year ago and then I maintained sobriety for a few weeks until the unexpected death of someone very close to me triggered me to relapse. Life stressors tend to be triggers. That's why I say I've been an addict for 20 something years. Even though I was clean many of those years, it's just an illness in remission. The struggle never ends it just waxes and wanes.
Now I'm trying to make arrangements in my affairs so I can go away to rehab again.
My point was, I'm not suicidal. I'm terrified of death. I'm not even depressed. I love the life that I've built. Yet I continue to use, compulsively, drugs that are causing me physical health problems and that have a high risk of ultimately killing me.
Addiction is a pathological state. Full genetic sequencing recently told me I have a D2 receptor subtype that is associated with a higher risk for addiction. Confirmed what I already knew.
It's a compulsion. It feels like a tic. There's a button in my brain that needs to be pressed, an itch that needs to be scratched, and only taking certain substances will do it.
I'm all for the decriminalization of drugs. No one should be incarcerated for this. It's reprehensible that our society does that. But full legalization of all substances? That's a position born of ignorance. These substances are not evil but they are biologically dangerous. Any chemicals that directly activate the reward pathways in the brain are inherently dangerous. Addicts are created they are not born. You shouldn't be able to buy heroin from the heroin store anymore than you should be able to buy sarin gas from the sarin gas store.
I've read all the articles about tranq. My heart aches for these addicts. My heart aches for all the friends I've lost to addiction. Welcome to Coming of Age in the Opioid Epidemic.
A proposal for upgrading these “safe use sites” (if we’re going to have them, might as well have good ones):
The use site has a (24/7 guarded) attached pharmacy with government-produced clean heroin, meth, etc. Users can trade in their drug, the pharmacist runs it through a mass spec analyzer and dispenses back to them an amount of pharmaceutical-grade drug of interest, the amount dispensed being equal to the fraction that is present in whatever cut/mixed drug sample they handed in.
In addition to the obvious safety benefits of only consuming guaranteed-pure drugs, the drug user gets an on-the-spot and very salient piece of information about the quality of the drug they purchased. This creates a lot of precise and accurate drug quality information and feeds it back into the drug abuse cycle. A user buys from a dealer, and right before their first hit they get a purity score to evaluate their dealer with - and maybe some information about what other drugs their dealer just tried to poison them with.
(To avoid some obvious risks: the tested drug sample should be immediately ejected from the analyzer into a denaturing bath and regularly incinerated, so that handed-in drugs are not a theft or recycling target. You probably need to mandate they can trade in only the dose they are about take, and they have to take it on the spot, so that government supplies do not leak back into the streets. There are certainly other failure modes too, a close eye should be kept on this and further processes brought in as needed.)
> dispenses back to them an amount of pharmaceutical-grade drug of interest, the amount dispensed being equal to the fraction that is present in whatever cut/mixed drug sample they handed in
If you're distributing drugs just distribute the drugs. Why cut in the dealers and cartels?
If the government is going to give out drugs, then they should just run some pharmacies similar to state run liquor stores. No need to force users to buy from dealers, that makes no sense at all.
The problem with this approach is that it is impossible. There is no "general chemical analyzer" that can consistently detect the quantity of a substance in any sample. You may as well suggest that a wizard uses his magic wand to purify the heroin.
Not to mention that users will begin to bring in all kinds of crap to see if they can get heroin from it — notably, their own excrement. Drug sellers likewise may decide it is unnecessary to recrystallize their products to remove solvents, since your suggestion makes no distinction between the sample contaminated with acetic anhydride and the one that was cut with mannitol. So there is still plenty of moral hazard.
This was debated when Vancouver first introduced safe injection sites, but was not put into place, as I understand it, because the government didn't want to become the drug dealer.
Pretty shocking to read that the worker in the safe site was also a daily IV meth user, I’m pretty shocked anyone can hold down a job with a daily IV meth habit.
I’m an Iraq war vet. I’ve lost friends to drugs, suicide, incredibly reckless behavior to the point it might as well be suicide. Once you’re in a cohort of people that are close to death, the mental strain of losing your friends has a way of squaring the circle for you. It takes an extraordinary amount of self control, and daily effort to change your circumstances. Being at arms distance all day from IV drug use is not going to do it. Previously I’ve been all for harm reduction centers, and safe places to test and use drugs, because I don’t believe that heavy handed prohibition solves anything. I’ve never seen a motivated human stopped from doing anything self destructive by threatening them with more self destruction. I hadn’t considered the mental tax on the employees that work in these centers. I think it’s still a net positive, but wow.
Article quotes "We know that xylazine is a veterinary tranquilizer, but we’re not sure how the drug dealers are getting it from clinics."
DEA says "A kilogram of xylazine powder can be purchased online from Chinese suppliers with common
prices ranging from $6-$20 U.S. dollars per kilogram. At this low price, its use as an adulterant
may increase the profit for illicit drug traffickers, as its psychoactive effects allows them to reduce the amount of fentanyl or heroin used in a mixture. It may also attract customers looking for a
longer high since xylazine is described as having many of the same effects for users as opioids,
but with a longer-lasting effect than fentanyl alone."
There are indications that alpha-2 antagonists can reverse or mitigate xylazine's effects.
Yohimbine, a very popular dietary supplement, is an alpha-2 antagonist. It reverses the sedative and cardiac effects of xylazine in animals [1], and should be quite well-tolerated in humans. It's also available in pure form via Amazon.com and millions of other places.
So it's not as though xylazine has no antidote in principle...
[1] - Spoerke, D. G., Hall, A. H., Grimes, M. J., Honea, B. N., & Rumack, B. H. (1986). Human overdose with the veterinary tranquilizer xylazine. The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 4(3), 222–224. doi:10.1016/0735-6757(86)90070-7
Ah, the result of war on drugs. People want to change their state of consciousness. People also self-medicate when facing issues, like chronic pains, or chronic mental stress.
Why don't we take a look at each category of drugs (benzos, opiates, stimulants, psychedelics, ...) and make the least harmful one or two of those legal? Regulate it, control it, make it safe. Create clinics where people can get educated about safe use, and where people can get clean, medical-grade drugs that they'll buy off of random dude in the suburbs otherwise.
People are going to use drugs. Alternatively, they'll get addicted to other things, like gambling, which can be just as destructive.
Stop making drug addiction a moral failure. It's not. It's a part of life, and a very human thing. I wonder how many wall street traders still regularly do coke nowadays.
I used to believe that these safe injection sites were an okay idea, but now I'm vehemently against them. These people need help, and should be FORCED into addiction relief programs. They shouldn't be left to continue their addictions unabated. That isn't freedom, it's slavery to drugs and drug dealers.
After seeing the absolute mess that SF has become, what I've come to realize is that these "supporters" of drug addicts are doing NOTHING to help them break their addiction. They are letting them accelerate their addiction, and they are doing nothing to help them get rid of their addiction.
If you look at all of these "progressive" programs, they look like insidious plots to hurt those they claim to want to help.
"Safe injection" sites actually keep addicts addicted for longer and don't help them conquer their addiction.
Education activists that want to drop education requirements because they are too hard to achieve for Black and Brown students don't help them learn, in fact they leave them uneducated by the time they graduate high school.
Mental health/homeless activists don't help homeless people solve the problems that lead to homelessness (usually mental health or drug addiction), instead they give band aid solutions that keep them homeless in perpetuity. The number of homeless people passed out on SF sidewalks and using the streets as their bathrooms have skyrocketed even though homeless funding is $600 million a year.
"Restorative justice" programs cause crime to skyrocket because criminals take advantage of these laws and commit crimes with no fear. Alameda County DA Pamela Price cares more about freeing criminals than helping her constituents get any modicum of justice or to keep their streets safe. She is doing the opposite of what she should be doing.
Everything that was promised by these far-left progressive policies have failed in the real world, and the fact they continue pushing them in the face of their failures is indication that they don't care about science or data, all their care about is dogma.
BTNX now supplies test strips for Xylazine, I just ordered the first batch for the harm reduction outreach group my friends and I run. If you are interested in helping street drug users in NYC consider donating at https://opencollective.com/dont-forget-the-streets all of our funds go directly to supplies. We also table at local DIY shows, supply bars and clubs with Fentanyl test strips, and host narcan trainings.
Drug users have been banging the drum about the dangers here for years now. All the drugs are toxic. There is no safe dosage. There is no opioid crisis. There are no opioids. It's all a toxic mess of unknown chemicals in the street drugs. This is a core reason why the death rate has been spiking upwards.
Really good to see more reporting about this, but also alarming at the delay from when the problem started and when mainstream press is starting to talk about it.
Advocacy groups have achieved a bit of traction of getting some media to correctly call this a "toxic drug" crisis, but here we see an example of a major national media outlet while thankfully still ploddingly coming around to reporting on the issue, still framing things in the deprecated terms of an "opioid crisis" framework that is years out of date.
The harm reduction activist claims the individual dealer isn’t at “fault” if the supply was laced after being passed around amongst other dealers. In that case, it would be more accurate to speak of the dealer’s intention, rather than responsibility.
This is what happens when criminals produce drugs. Drugs of abuse should be legally produced by professionals and made available to adults, e.g. tobacco, cannabis, alcohol.
>we spoke to Kali Sedgemore, a long-time harm-reduction expert in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside who also works with Vancouver Coastal Health
I'm not shocked the article is from BC and even less that it was Downtown Eastside.. I think all Canadians know about the Downtown Eastside. Even here on the opposite coast I know its reputation.
YouTube suggested a video just a few days ago to me of a Vancouver fire hall located in the Downtown Eastside. Most fire halls in Vancouver average 600 calls per month but Fire hall 2 they get 1,600 calls per month!
Ketamine-xylazine is the drug combo given to rats when I worked in a lab doing animal studies. It is approved to make them go to sleep and feel nothing before death by exsanguination.
The Anglo West's approach to drugs has absolutely failed. Rehab the abusers, lock up and punish the dealers (some countries use the death penalty to strong results), and secure your borders properly.
Instead, we get kvetching and hand-wringing about "what can be done", and tittering discussions on online message boards, while society decays even further.
Who are you asking to do this? Daddy government? The federal government and its industry masters fucking love drugs. Caffeine and alcohol in every town, adderall-fueled tech and finance, FDA-approved Sackler opiates, US-guarded Afghan poppy fields, the CIA's LSD-based involuntary mind control experimentation on US citizens, the tobacco industry, the sugar lobby. You want these organizations to tell us what we can and can't put in our bloodstream?
Criminalizing street drug use and distribution will probably fail so long as there is strong and inelastic demand — the kind created by addiction. This is why it is important to remove demand by effectively rehabilitating the users, educating those not using, and not facilitating continued use. There is no "safe use" in reality; all use of controlled narcotic substances leads to addiction, and poor health and occupational functioning outcomes.
On the supply side, even the death penalty can be priced in when the demand is strong. The narcotics business is one of death, not just due to the criminality and the death penalty in some regions, but also due to no labor protections, prevalent drug use among the producers and distributors, and clashes with law enforcement and rival criminal orgs. This has deterred neither the suppliers nor consumers. When even the probability of death isn't a good deterrent, a probability of imprisonment won't work either.
Speaking of death not being a deterrent to lucrative business, the narcotics industry is not an outlier. Industries involving underwater operations like welding, oil rig work, coal mining, logging, high-rise maintenance, stunt performance, mercenary work, experimental aircraft piloting, and similar all exploit death for large profits. It's just capitalism. So a solution to the drugs crisis needs to work within a capitalist world.
I’m not sure why you are being downvoted. It’s a perfectly acceptable solution and has been tried with great results in El Salvador. I would argue that El Salvador is safer than SF and has a way more friendly tax policy. And the government is not trying to actively punish you for crimes you never committed, in the case of reparations.
Stop the dumb policy of letting drugs free.
This needs to end, and the government must intervene and put an end to every drug dealer, and seriously find a way to deal with addicts.
[+] [-] monero-xmr|3 years ago|reply
> “The tranq dope literally eats your flesh,” she said. “It’s self-destruction at its finest.”
> She unrolled a bandage from elbow to palm. Beneath patches of blackened tissue, exposed white tendons and pus, the sheared flesh was hot and red. To stave off xylazine’s excruciating withdrawal, she said, she injects tranq dope several times a day. Fearful that injecting in a fresh site could create a new wound, she reluctantly shoots into her festering forearm.
> The only person who would let her use a cellphone was a guy whose arm and leg had been amputated because of his tranq wounds. He was still injecting into his leg stump.
If a drug that literally turns you into a melting, oozing zombie with flesh dripping off your bones doesn't make you find a different drug - not even quit, I mean, find a different drug to get fucked up on - I think that person is suicidal. This is some morbid shit right here.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|3 years ago|reply
I think you have not even the most basic understanding of addiction, or (perhaps most relevant to this case) specifically withdrawal. If you are addicted, you can’t simply choose a substitute, and particularly you can’t avoid withdrawal from one drug just by choosing another, except for some very special cases.
[+] [-] this_steve_j|3 years ago|reply
It’s more of a head space where you don’t care whether or not you are alive tomorrow, and I definitely shouldn’t be doing this, but that’s a problem for tomorrow.
If there’s even a brief moment of contemplation it is no match for the physical withdrawal that takes over from your rational mind, like a totally different person carjacking your your body at gunpoint with a sensible plan to save the day. The negotiation lasts less than one second.
Frustration, bewilderment, terror, despair, oblivion, repeat.
Recovery is not easy. It’s obviously a lot more complicated than “don’t do that, dummy!”, considering that message combined with gangrene loses the argument with the carjacker nine times out of ten.
Edit: sober for 9 years (one day at a time).
[+] [-] poink|3 years ago|reply
Someone doing this stuff isn't thinking of the endgame any more than an alcoholic is thinking about cirrhosis. They just want to get high. They're not at the opiod buffet picking their fave. They're doing the best stuff their dealer has that they can afford.
[+] [-] Weatebob|3 years ago|reply
The social net / missing social network is.
Our society struggles to take care of its own people because we live in a mentally restraint.
Even in Germany were you have a right for a basic living like a flat and heat and foot and electricity we have homeless.
And no we don't spend the money a flat and everything would cost us into alternative 'equivilent' like enough street worker / social help for them.
People with good choices and support primarily choose non self harming activities.
Everyone else should get proper professional care.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|3 years ago|reply
Reminds me of Krokodil [1].
That said, I just finished listening to an episode of Radiolab [2] describing how unsubstantiated claims about fentanyl causing overdoses through contact may have triggered episodes of mass psychogenic illness [3]. So I'm inclined to take these gory images with a grain of salt, e.g. these may be a wounds that were neglected due to drug use versus unavoidably caused by it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desomorphine#Toxicity_of_kroko...
[2] https://radiolab.org/podcast/good-samaritan
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desomorphine#Toxicity_of_kroko...
[+] [-] 1attice|3 years ago|reply
Important to remember that the alternative to shooting up is, often, to be cold, and miserable, alone, on the street, with no sleep.
One possibility potentiates the other.
Horrifically, you could even think of drug use as an attempt to adapt to loss of housing.
The backdrop for urban drug use, here in Vancouver, is a profound housing crisis and shortage, and a complete, thoroughgoing failure on the part of multiple levels of government to do anything about it.
[+] [-] grugagag|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jtmlis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runnerup|3 years ago|reply
https://www.aad.org/dw/dw-insights-and-inquiries/archive/202...
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jacooper|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickserv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lamename|3 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward_system#Wanting_and_li...
[+] [-] lr4444lr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] privthrowaway|3 years ago|reply
They're not suicidal. Addiction is a pathological state. I've been an addict, with some long periods of sobriety and/or healthy moderation, since my late teens and I'm in my 40s now. Opioids is what got me started but it doesn't matter the substance. They change. At the moment I'm trying really hard to get clean from a serious cocaine and ketamine addiction.
I'm also a successful business owner and CEO, I'm Very High Net Worth, I have a loving partner and a loving family. I had no significant traumas growing up. I have access to the highest level of care possible. Between my psychiatrist and my addiction specialist and all the various coaches and providers I spend hours a week working on this problem.
And yet I cannot stop taking drugs. I cannot stop by will alone. Having been through the ups and downs so many times I know I have to attack this problem from like 20 different angles 20 different times before I'll stop. I've been through this so many times now.
I went to rehab a year ago and then I maintained sobriety for a few weeks until the unexpected death of someone very close to me triggered me to relapse. Life stressors tend to be triggers. That's why I say I've been an addict for 20 something years. Even though I was clean many of those years, it's just an illness in remission. The struggle never ends it just waxes and wanes.
Now I'm trying to make arrangements in my affairs so I can go away to rehab again.
My point was, I'm not suicidal. I'm terrified of death. I'm not even depressed. I love the life that I've built. Yet I continue to use, compulsively, drugs that are causing me physical health problems and that have a high risk of ultimately killing me.
Addiction is a pathological state. Full genetic sequencing recently told me I have a D2 receptor subtype that is associated with a higher risk for addiction. Confirmed what I already knew.
It's a compulsion. It feels like a tic. There's a button in my brain that needs to be pressed, an itch that needs to be scratched, and only taking certain substances will do it.
I'm all for the decriminalization of drugs. No one should be incarcerated for this. It's reprehensible that our society does that. But full legalization of all substances? That's a position born of ignorance. These substances are not evil but they are biologically dangerous. Any chemicals that directly activate the reward pathways in the brain are inherently dangerous. Addicts are created they are not born. You shouldn't be able to buy heroin from the heroin store anymore than you should be able to buy sarin gas from the sarin gas store.
I've read all the articles about tranq. My heart aches for these addicts. My heart aches for all the friends I've lost to addiction. Welcome to Coming of Age in the Opioid Epidemic.
[+] [-] thrownaway561|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fwlr|3 years ago|reply
The use site has a (24/7 guarded) attached pharmacy with government-produced clean heroin, meth, etc. Users can trade in their drug, the pharmacist runs it through a mass spec analyzer and dispenses back to them an amount of pharmaceutical-grade drug of interest, the amount dispensed being equal to the fraction that is present in whatever cut/mixed drug sample they handed in.
In addition to the obvious safety benefits of only consuming guaranteed-pure drugs, the drug user gets an on-the-spot and very salient piece of information about the quality of the drug they purchased. This creates a lot of precise and accurate drug quality information and feeds it back into the drug abuse cycle. A user buys from a dealer, and right before their first hit they get a purity score to evaluate their dealer with - and maybe some information about what other drugs their dealer just tried to poison them with.
(To avoid some obvious risks: the tested drug sample should be immediately ejected from the analyzer into a denaturing bath and regularly incinerated, so that handed-in drugs are not a theft or recycling target. You probably need to mandate they can trade in only the dose they are about take, and they have to take it on the spot, so that government supplies do not leak back into the streets. There are certainly other failure modes too, a close eye should be kept on this and further processes brought in as needed.)
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|3 years ago|reply
If you're distributing drugs just distribute the drugs. Why cut in the dealers and cartels?
[+] [-] argc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] herbst|3 years ago|reply
We are doing this for many years now and seems that new opiods rarely really hit the market at all.
[+] [-] scythe|3 years ago|reply
Not to mention that users will begin to bring in all kinds of crap to see if they can get heroin from it — notably, their own excrement. Drug sellers likewise may decide it is unnecessary to recrystallize their products to remove solvents, since your suggestion makes no distinction between the sample contaminated with acetic anhydride and the one that was cut with mannitol. So there is still plenty of moral hazard.
[+] [-] pedalpete|3 years ago|reply
However, while searching for a source to back up my above statement, all I could find is https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/health/fentanyl-vancouver... from Aug '22. So apparently they are supplying now.
[+] [-] bigbillheck|3 years ago|reply
Just how cheap do you think mass spec is?
[+] [-] asynchronous|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsabanin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] canadianfella|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] MarkMarine|3 years ago|reply
I’m an Iraq war vet. I’ve lost friends to drugs, suicide, incredibly reckless behavior to the point it might as well be suicide. Once you’re in a cohort of people that are close to death, the mental strain of losing your friends has a way of squaring the circle for you. It takes an extraordinary amount of self control, and daily effort to change your circumstances. Being at arms distance all day from IV drug use is not going to do it. Previously I’ve been all for harm reduction centers, and safe places to test and use drugs, because I don’t believe that heavy handed prohibition solves anything. I’ve never seen a motivated human stopped from doing anything self destructive by threatening them with more self destruction. I hadn’t considered the mental tax on the employees that work in these centers. I think it’s still a net positive, but wow.
[+] [-] cypherpunks01|3 years ago|reply
https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2022-12/The%20Growin...
Article quotes "We know that xylazine is a veterinary tranquilizer, but we’re not sure how the drug dealers are getting it from clinics."
DEA says "A kilogram of xylazine powder can be purchased online from Chinese suppliers with common prices ranging from $6-$20 U.S. dollars per kilogram. At this low price, its use as an adulterant may increase the profit for illicit drug traffickers, as its psychoactive effects allows them to reduce the amount of fentanyl or heroin used in a mixture. It may also attract customers looking for a longer high since xylazine is described as having many of the same effects for users as opioids, but with a longer-lasting effect than fentanyl alone."
[+] [-] A_D_E_P_T|3 years ago|reply
It's an alpha-2 adrenergic receptor agonist.
There are indications that alpha-2 antagonists can reverse or mitigate xylazine's effects.
Yohimbine, a very popular dietary supplement, is an alpha-2 antagonist. It reverses the sedative and cardiac effects of xylazine in animals [1], and should be quite well-tolerated in humans. It's also available in pure form via Amazon.com and millions of other places.
So it's not as though xylazine has no antidote in principle...
[1] - Spoerke, D. G., Hall, A. H., Grimes, M. J., Honea, B. N., & Rumack, B. H. (1986). Human overdose with the veterinary tranquilizer xylazine. The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 4(3), 222–224. doi:10.1016/0735-6757(86)90070-7
[+] [-] BossingAround|3 years ago|reply
Why don't we take a look at each category of drugs (benzos, opiates, stimulants, psychedelics, ...) and make the least harmful one or two of those legal? Regulate it, control it, make it safe. Create clinics where people can get educated about safe use, and where people can get clean, medical-grade drugs that they'll buy off of random dude in the suburbs otherwise.
People are going to use drugs. Alternatively, they'll get addicted to other things, like gambling, which can be just as destructive.
Stop making drug addiction a moral failure. It's not. It's a part of life, and a very human thing. I wonder how many wall street traders still regularly do coke nowadays.
[+] [-] triyambakam|3 years ago|reply
> ... Now, I’m a daily intravenous meth user.
I really didn't expect the harm reduction worker to be actively addicted.
[+] [-] blindriver|3 years ago|reply
After seeing the absolute mess that SF has become, what I've come to realize is that these "supporters" of drug addicts are doing NOTHING to help them break their addiction. They are letting them accelerate their addiction, and they are doing nothing to help them get rid of their addiction.
If you look at all of these "progressive" programs, they look like insidious plots to hurt those they claim to want to help.
"Safe injection" sites actually keep addicts addicted for longer and don't help them conquer their addiction.
Education activists that want to drop education requirements because they are too hard to achieve for Black and Brown students don't help them learn, in fact they leave them uneducated by the time they graduate high school.
Mental health/homeless activists don't help homeless people solve the problems that lead to homelessness (usually mental health or drug addiction), instead they give band aid solutions that keep them homeless in perpetuity. The number of homeless people passed out on SF sidewalks and using the streets as their bathrooms have skyrocketed even though homeless funding is $600 million a year.
"Restorative justice" programs cause crime to skyrocket because criminals take advantage of these laws and commit crimes with no fear. Alameda County DA Pamela Price cares more about freeing criminals than helping her constituents get any modicum of justice or to keep their streets safe. She is doing the opposite of what she should be doing.
Everything that was promised by these far-left progressive policies have failed in the real world, and the fact they continue pushing them in the face of their failures is indication that they don't care about science or data, all their care about is dogma.
[+] [-] meandave|3 years ago|reply
Xylazine test strips link: https://www.btnx.com/Product?id=2019
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|3 years ago|reply
Really good to see more reporting about this, but also alarming at the delay from when the problem started and when mainstream press is starting to talk about it.
Advocacy groups have achieved a bit of traction of getting some media to correctly call this a "toxic drug" crisis, but here we see an example of a major national media outlet while thankfully still ploddingly coming around to reporting on the issue, still framing things in the deprecated terms of an "opioid crisis" framework that is years out of date.
[+] [-] provenance|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitcoin_anon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dghughes|3 years ago|reply
I'm not shocked the article is from BC and even less that it was Downtown Eastside.. I think all Canadians know about the Downtown Eastside. Even here on the opposite coast I know its reputation.
YouTube suggested a video just a few days ago to me of a Vancouver fire hall located in the Downtown Eastside. Most fire halls in Vancouver average 600 calls per month but Fire hall 2 they get 1,600 calls per month!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVnmEpbWmhc
[+] [-] Mistletoe|3 years ago|reply
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3103284/
[+] [-] forgingahead|3 years ago|reply
Instead, we get kvetching and hand-wringing about "what can be done", and tittering discussions on online message boards, while society decays even further.
[+] [-] JPws_Prntr_Fngr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clnq|3 years ago|reply
On the supply side, even the death penalty can be priced in when the demand is strong. The narcotics business is one of death, not just due to the criminality and the death penalty in some regions, but also due to no labor protections, prevalent drug use among the producers and distributors, and clashes with law enforcement and rival criminal orgs. This has deterred neither the suppliers nor consumers. When even the probability of death isn't a good deterrent, a probability of imprisonment won't work either.
Speaking of death not being a deterrent to lucrative business, the narcotics industry is not an outlier. Industries involving underwater operations like welding, oil rig work, coal mining, logging, high-rise maintenance, stunt performance, mercenary work, experimental aircraft piloting, and similar all exploit death for large profits. It's just capitalism. So a solution to the drugs crisis needs to work within a capitalist world.
[+] [-] mise_en_place|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inconceivable|3 years ago|reply
plus now you can just blame china for everything. it's super convenient and lucrative!
[+] [-] rejectfinite|3 years ago|reply
Doesn't Thailand/Japan etc have even harsher anti-drug laws?
[+] [-] jacooper|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] w10-1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaron695|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] quattrofan|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Haga|3 years ago|reply
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