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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   29309 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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(desperate and not especially well-informed or conscientious) people try without grasping the full consequences of what they're doing.

So we need some kind of public awareness campaign? That would improve the issue? I do believe that some of the issues with the Drug War was that the government was doing fear-mongering and not really providing accurate information, but still. I think a lot of people take it because it's the best they can get. Perhaps if the most desperate of sinners were provided safer high quality drugs then they would not resort to fentanyl? Or perhaps we need to refashion society in such a way that constantly seeking a new high is not a marginally acceptable alternative to being a semi-productive member of society.

Naively a misanthrope might consider it an effective way to get rid of undesirables, but even that makes no sense: its an addiction that reproduces itself for each new doomed-to-die cohort.

Does it really? A lot of these addicts seem to have quite a decent life expectancy, what with all these good samaritans going around with Narcan. The addiction itself is accessory. Desperate people would become addicted to something else if fentanyl and the other street stuff was completely eradicated. They are just a symptom of a sick society and they rightfully pile up in these progressive cities, in front of the very eyeballs that need to connect some dots, but that has not worked so far.

Last year, over 800 people died in San Francisco to overdose. Compare that to 56 homicides and 27 traffic deaths. Or, heck, the ~700 COVID deaths from 2020 to the end of 2021.

Addicts have a shockingly low lifespan. And fentanyl is the key component of their mortality: approximately nobody dies from crack or meth, the usual drugs of choice. Which isn't to say they're not damaging or that I don't want to see them off the streets, but fentanyl stands out as particularly evil.

Nitpick, but "approximately nobody dies from crack or meth overdose". I'm guessing methamphetamine addiction would have been involved in a decent chunk of those murders, even if the numbers are still obviously lower than those from fentanyl.

I think some of that might be substitution effect, too- meth users who would eventually OD on the stuff die from fentanyl first.

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