Fentanyl Deaths

[nsacpi]

I'm glad to see this becoming a focus of public discussion. Although the decision to use fentanyl and other drugs is an individual one and I want to be careful not to tread (too heavily) upon the doctrine of individual responsibility, I thought it would a good idea to have a thread to discuss how this problem might be addressed from a policy perspective.

Here is an article from the CDC providing some basic data on deaths by drug overdose over the years.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/d...rdose-data.htm

More basic info specific to fentanyl.

https://drugabusestatistics.org/fent...se-statistics/

[sturg33]

all of these useless threads you start can be put in the Biden presidency thread

[nsacpi]

An interesting and informative article from a libertarian perspective.


https://libertarianinstitute.org/art...from-fentanyl/

[nsacpi]

all of these useless threads you start can be put in the Biden presidency thread

No. The problem of fentanyl has been brewing for a while now. It has been a significant part of the "deaths of despair" phenomenon that has been causing white working class life expectancy to decline.

[nsacpi]

Deaths of despair were first defined by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, two economists, in 2015. These were deaths due to suicide, overdoses, and alcoholic liver diseases disproportionately impacting White males without a college degree. As Vox [1] so vividly described the problem, “In 2017 alone, there were 158,000 deaths of despair in the US: the equivalent of “three fully loaded Boeing 737 MAX jets falling out of the sky every day for a year.” A new study seeks to understand why these deaths increase in the US, but not 16 other high-income, industrialized nations.

https://www.acsh.org/news/2022/02/08...llege%20degree.

[sturg33]

No. The problem of fentanyl has been brewing for a while now. It has been a significant part of the "deaths of despair" phenomenon that has been causing white working class life expectancy to decline.

Great... outside of shoveling money to Ukraine, what is the President doing about it?

Shoring up our border?

[nsacpi]

Great... outside of shoveling money to Ukraine, what is the President doing about it?

Shoring up our border?

well since you asked, I will share an excerpt from the article linked above:

The authors suggest that much of our support system for those first 20 years has changed, citing alterations in family structure – from multigenerational to single parent. They believe that these changes make our period of dependency far more uncertain, with fewer dopamine-rewarded moments.

Single-parent households have quadrupled over 50 years to 16 million, leaving 25% of all children in single-parent families.
Single-parent households are 2.5 more likely to live in economic poverty, with 3-fold higher infant mortality.
Increasingly, childcare becomes more fractionated or difficult to obtain
Education, beyond high school, a key to financial success, is increasingly viewed as an individual responsibility – Student borrowing quadrupled between 2005 and 2015 with an average debt of $39,351. 6% of students owe more than $100,000.
The goal of the viewpoint was to point to differences between our statistics and that of those 16-control countries.

Single-parent households are less common, with increases half that of the US.
All provide prenatal and maternal care reducing premature and low birth weight infants “well below that in the US”
They provide pre-school beginning at age three, and funding for education up through completion of high school is nationally funded, removing the disparities of funding that we see in our system. Six of the “controls” have no tuition college; 2 require less than $2,000. All have tuitions less than that of the US.
Many of those reading this will argue that this is the nanny state – cradle to grave economic support. What if we “flip the script” and consider the signal that is deaths of despair differently? What if, unintentionally, our social structure fosters defeat more than it supports success. What if it does take a village to raise a child?

[sturg33]

Yeah amazing how the left has made it their mission to destroy the nuclear family... Bringing more misery and despair to more people.

Meanwhile, today, in 2022, the best way to help the fetenyl issue is to shore up the southern border.

The president is doing the opposite of that... While he sends unlimited inflated dollars to Ukraine

[nsacpi]

[nsacpi]

WASHINGTON — Deaths from drug overdoses continued rising to record-breaking levels in 2021, nearing 108,000, according to preliminary new data published on Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The increase of nearly 15 percent followed a much steeper rise of almost 30 percent in 2020, an unrelenting crisis that has consumed federal and state drug policy officials. The number of drug overdose deaths has increased every year but 2018 since the 1970s.


A growing share of deaths came from overdoses involving fentanyl, a class of potent synthetic opioids that are often mixed with other drugs, and methamphetamine, a synthetic stimulant. State health officials battling an influx of both drugs said many of the deaths appeared to be the result of combining the two.

The White House in recent weeks announced President Biden’s first national drug control strategy, and a plan to combat meth use, unveiled last week by his drug czar, Dr. Rahul Gupta, the first medical doctor to oversee the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Overdose deaths involving meth almost tripled between 2015 and 2019 in people 18 to 64, according to the National Institutes of Health.

The White House in recent weeks announced President Biden’s first national drug control strategy, and a plan to combat meth use, unveiled last week by his drug czar, Dr. Rahul Gupta, the first medical doctor to oversee the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Overdose deaths involving meth almost tripled between 2015 and 2019 in people 18 to 64, according to the National Institutes of Health.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/11/u...anyl-meth.html

[sturg33]

Wow I wonder what policies may have been forced on us to cause these unintented consequences.

If memory serves you were the biggest cheerleader.

**** you, by the way

[nsacpi]

Fentanyl, which is made in a lab, can be cheaper and easier to produce and distribute than heroin, enhancing its appeal to dealers and traffickers. But because it is strong and sold in varying formulations, small differences in quantity can mean the difference between a drug user’s usual dose and one that proves deadly. It is particularly dangerous when it is used unwittingly by drug users who do not usually take opioids. The spread of fentanyl into a ever-growing portion of the nation’s drug supply has continued to flummox even states with strong addiction-treatment services.

Often synthesized in Mexico from precursor chemicals made in China, fentanyl long ago permeated the heroin markets of the Northeast and Midwest. But recent data shows it has established a strong hold in the South and West as well.

“The economics of fentanyl have just been pushing the other drugs out of the market,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s just so cheap to buy fentanyl and turn around and put it in whatever.”

[nsacpi]

In Vermont, 93 percent of opioid deaths in 2021 were fentanyl-related, according to Kelly Dougherty, the state’s deputy health commissioner.

“In the beginning stages of the pandemic, we were attributing the increase to life being disrupted,” she said. But now, she added, a different explanation seems clear: “What is really the primary driver is the presence of fentanyl in the drug supply.”

The state’s celebrated “hub and spoke” model of addiction treatment and its aggressive use of medication-assisted treatment programs, she said, were not enough to contend with the ease and speed with which people overdose on fentanyl.

“You can have the most robust treatment system,” she said, “and not everybody is going to avail themselves of it when maybe they should, or before they end up overdosing.”

[sturg33]

What has more? Fentanyl deaths in the US or deaths from Russia in Ukraine?

What should the president of the United States be focused more on?

[nsacpi]

What has more? Fentanyl deaths in the US or deaths from Russia in Ukraine?

What should the president of the United States be focused more on?

It is true. More people have died in this country from making the choice (an important concept to libertarians I am told) to shoot themselves up with a deadly drug.

Now I happen to believe both in personal responsibility and the importance of effective policy in addressing social problems like childhood poverty and drug use. So I have no problem actually advocating for measures (some costly) to reduce deaths from fentanyl.

I am even in favor of raising taxes (on people with high incomes) to pay for things like effective border controls, programs to reduce the harm from fentanyl, enhanced refundable tax credits for families with children, and yes aid to Ukraine.

I further observe with some degree of satisfaction that the federal deficit for fiscal year 2022 is on track to be below that of fiscal year 2019 and maybe even fiscal year 2018, a golden era for America as those of you on the rapid response team so often remind us.

[sturg33]

I understand that bidens allegiance must first be to the people of Ukraine, but feels like this lack of attention is intentional and increasing American despair

[sturg33]

After we are done laundering money to Ukraine can we maybe look at our own border?

This is quite obviously intentional

[cajunrevenge]

why? Are you telling me Trumps wall isnt working?

[Tapate50]

After we are done laundering money to Ukraine can we maybe look at our own border?

This is quite obviously intentional

Kamala is on it. She was given the task of securing it a year ago. Fix incoming.