{"id":43576,"date":"2018-05-29T03:00:55","date_gmt":"2018-05-29T07:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=43576"},"modified":"2018-05-28T10:30:13","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T14:30:13","slug":"theres-just-no-way-that-were-going-to-get-to-fentanyl-harm-reduction-without-legalization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/05\/29\/theres-just-no-way-that-were-going-to-get-to-fentanyl-harm-reduction-without-legalization\/","title":{"rendered":"“[T]here\u2019s just no way that we\u2019re going to get to fentanyl harm reduction without [legalization]”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tim Worstall<\/a> reports on a recent Nebraska drug bust involving enough fentanyl “to kill 26 million people” (that is, about 120 lbs of the stuff) and explains why the current enforcement regime is going to have to change:<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m in favour of all of these drugs being legalised anyway. It\u2019s the idiot\u2019s body, up to them what they ingest in whatever manner. If it kills them, well, their choice. The argument that they shouldn\u2019t therefore we must prevent them doesn\u2019t cut much ice with me.<\/p>\n

But put that aside and think in a utilitarian manner. If we can prevent overdoses and wasted lives then we should. But only if how we\u2019re going to do it is better than the results of either not doing so or even using some other manner of dealing with the problem.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s arguable that clamping down on certain illegal drugs does at least limit their penetration of the market. I don\u2019t think this is true of heroin but perhaps it is potentially true. It\u2019s absolutely not true of fentanyl. For that\u2019s a synthetic opioid. A decent chemist can synthesise it \u2013 a good one can make the precursors as well. There is no need to get opium, morphine or any other poppy related product that we already control.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also, as we can see, alarmingly cheap already. Easy to smuggle in vast quantities of doses.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another problem with it. The difference between a dose that gives a high and one that kills is pretty narrow. And it\u2019s an extremely potent drug as well. Quantities for either are small \u2013 smaller than can generally be measured by users with candles and teaspoons.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s cheap, easy enough to make, has no precursors we can control, kills easily enough and dosage is alarmingly difficult to get right. So, what do we do?<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not going to get rid of it for all of the above reasons. So, we need to do damage limitation. Stopping people from dying from it sounds like a pretty good idea actually. And that means that we need it to be pure and in known dosages. That is, we need it to be legal.<\/p>\n

I think all drugs should be legal, hey, your body and all that. But even if you think that harm reduction is a more important goal there\u2019s just no way that we\u2019re going to get to fentanyl harm reduction without legality of it. For that\u2019s the only way we will get it in known doses which don\u2019t kill people. And we\u2019re most assuredly going to keep getting it even if we don\u2019t legalise it. Our choices are people tooting on illegal fentanyl and dying or people tooting on legal fentayl and not dying. Not such a toughie that question, is it?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tim Worstall reports on a recent Nebraska drug bust involving enough fentanyl “to kill 26 million people” (that is, about 120 lbs of the stuff) and explains why the current enforcement regime is going to have to change: Now, I\u2019m in favour of all of these drugs being legalised anyway. It\u2019s the idiot\u2019s body, up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,9,10,13],"tags":[872,343,119],"class_list":["post-43576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-law","category-liberty","category-usa","tag-chemistry","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-drugs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bkQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43576"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43577,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43576\/revisions\/43577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}