Dark web dealers voluntarily ban deadly fentanyl

[Eugene]

Source: The Observer

Dark web dealers voluntarily ban deadly fentanyl

Suppliers, fearing police crackdown, decide opioid is too high-risk to trade

Mark Townsend
Sat 1 Dec 2018 14.27 GMT

Major dark web drug suppliers have started to voluntarily ban the synthetic opioid fentanyl because it is too dangerous, the National Crime Agency has said.

They are “delisting” the high-strength painkiller, effectively classifying it alongside mass-casualty firearms and explosives as commodities that are considered too high-risk to trade. Fentanyl can be up to 100 times stronger than heroin and can easily cause accidental overdoses, particularly when mixed with heroin.

Vince O’Brien, one of the NCA’s leads on drugs, told the Observer that dark web marketplace operators appeared to have made a commercial decision, because selling a drug that could lead to fatalities was more likely to prompt attention from police.

It is the first known instance of these types of operators moving to effectively ban a drug.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/dec/01/dark-web-dealers-voluntary-ban-deadly-fentanyl

[mr_lebowski]

1. The problem with Fentanyl specifically is that the proper tools to measure it cost 1000's of $$$

To measure it properly in it's pure form (where dosages are in micrograms rather than milligrams), you need extremely high-precision instruments, and optimally a laboratory like environment, where things like air pressure are being controlled.

While I think this development, if true, is very good news, eventually the manufacturers of this stuff are going to start marketing it at a more-manageable concentration. Granted, that increases legal risk to whole supply chain, due to the packages getting larger (one of the 'beauties' of pure Fentanyl is that someone could transport $20,000 worth of it in 2 packets that would occupy a space as small as that between 'arches' of your feet and the bottom of your shoe), but I think it's inevitable that the labs making this stuff are just going to start diluting it.

The real problem is that Fentanyl is a 100% synthetic opioid, which means that it requires no actual 'Poppy Product' (no morphine/codeine/thebaine) as a precursor. Just 'other' chemicals, all of which have other 'valid' uses.

The only real solution to this crisis (assuming we're to remain as a 'free country') is to really, earnestly begin addressing it as public health crisis, stop making addicts into villains, increase expenditures for education dramatically, make it MUCH easier and cheaper for people to get replacement therapy such as buprenorphine and methadone ... and I think we're going to need to seriously ponder the UK approach of letting people register as addicts, and come to designated locations where they're given Rx Heroin (or oxycontin, or whatever), and clean needles for the IV users, and medical supervision ... and they are allowed to just ... use. Safely. Take the opportunity while they're there to give them counseling. Try to get them to switch to methadone or buprenorphine, make it easy and cheap to do so. Or try to get them into any sort of treatment programs that are shown to actually WORK.

We also need non-opioid drugs developed that legitimately ease the pain of opioid withdrawal. That 'tech' has not come far in 20 years, and that's ridiculous. The latest drug they're trying to get $1000's for for one course of treatment ... is just BARELY more effective than Clonidine (and the same method of action), which rehabs have been using for 20+ years.