What difference does it make? The street fentanyl is coming from illicit labs, not the Rx supply.
Also a lot of people that do drugs to get high they snort drugs or shoot drugs up like heroin user. I don’t know of any legal drug that the doctor will give you to take legally for medical purposes and ask you to snort drugs or shoot drugs up.
Lot of these people that overdose on Fentanyl may be snorting it or shooting it up.
Fentanyl is used on the street primarily to substitute for heroin. It’s cheap enough that the dealer can sub in a bit of fentanyl for a larger amount of heroin. The dose has the same overall potency but at a cheaper cost.
Fentanyl in it’s pure form is too small an amount to handle on a single dose level. Therapeutic doses are measured in micrograms.
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So in other words it is too potent for the street but some how it okay for therapeutic use because the pharmaceutical companies are doing it and it is less potent for them.
With the skyrocketing overdose and media backlash I wonder how long before drug dealers stop making Fentanyl for the street and switch to some thing else?
The pharmaceutical companies have the facilities to properly mix the medication so it safe to use (when used properly). You slap on a patch, you should be good. The patches can be cut open to extract the gel and taken all at once but that’s deliberate.
The problem on the street is dealers can’t mix the fentanyl evenly, someone gets the minuscule (and fatal) nugget of fentanyl and it’s adios.
Like playing Russian Roulette.
It’s all supply and demand. So if the demand goes away the dealers will quit making it.
But I have the feeling that customers are more concerned that the stuff they are buying is too weak and doesn’t get them high–rather than that the stuff is too strong and some people are overdosing.
Oxycontin was obtained from doctors. The DEA clamped down on doctors prescribing opiates, so now there are tons of addicts who can’t get the drugs from their doctors anymore. so they go to the streets.
Fentanyl is mostly obtained from China, bought via the black market and shipped to the US. It costs about $2000 for a kilogram. Seeing how a dose of fentanyl is less than 1mg, that means a million doses for $2000, or about 1/5 of a penny per recreational dose.
When you consider that a kilo of heroin is about $20,000 and is something like 20x less powerful than fentanyl, the cost incentive to cut heroin with fentanyl is there.
I assume a single kilo of fentanyl is enough to cut all the heroin in multiple states. If a kilo provides a million doses, then a few kilos from China can probably supply the entire midwest for a year. Seeing how you need such a small amount, it is easier to smuggle than heroin which requires endless kilos to saturate the market.
Opium wars 2, revenge of China.
Fentanyl deaths in Ohio went from less than 100 in 2013 to over 1100 in 2015. By 2016, Cuyahoga county (which is where Cleveland is) had over 500 fentanyl deaths. That county only makes up 1/10th of the entire population of Ohio. And that is just Ohio.
This is actually considered a very good thing to addicts. They know it’s strong enough to accidentally OD on and they also think such a fate could never befall them, so they do it with glee.
I know several people who snort legal prescription drugs for lung problems, mostly asthma or COPD. They actually have inhalers supplied by the pharmacist to snort these drugs.
Also, they are now starting to do some immunizations via inhaling the drugs.
So why is Oxycontin/Oxycodone, hyrdromorphone AND morphine use down but fentanyl so high?
Why is fentanyl the big range these days? Why so many people use fentanyl these days and Oxycontin/Oxycodone, hyrdromorphone AND morphine use down?
As been mentioned several times, fentanyl is cheaper and easier to smuggle due to it’s very high potency and resulting smaller bulk.
Would you prefer to hide this?(1/2 kilo of heroin) Or this?
That bag of fentanyl is 50 grams. 1/10th of that is equal to the half kilo of heroin.
That also means rather than what ever amount of heroin makes a dose, you can sub in 1/100th of that of fentanyl, the rest is whatever you cut the drug with and it results in a cheaper product with the same potency.
Sounds like this drug achieves the purest result from what codeine and vicodin could accomplish. Next stop: an immediate euphoric high followed by certain death.
There was lots of drug dealers selling Oxycontin/Oxycodone, hyrdromorphone AND morphine on the streets.
So what have changed?
Or is Oxycontin/Oxycodone, hyrdromorphone AND morphine harder to make in underground lab than fentanyl? And that is why they switch to fentanyl?
Oxycodone, hydromorphone, and morphine generally require opium for their manufacture. That’s hard to get. They can be made synthetically, but it’s not that easy.
Meanwhile fentanyl is easy-peasy for street chemists to cook up out of other materials than opium.
And as was noted earlier, fentanyl is also super cheap and super potent. And switch a few methyl or hydroxyl groups around and it’s a whole new drug that’s not even illegal yet! (tho the modifications may kill the user, or give him instant Parkinsonism)
It’s not complicated. Fentanyl: Easier to make, less risk to hide and distribute, brings in tons of money. Why wasn’t it more popular earlier? Because docs were being pushed by the hospitals, who were being pushed by the JCAH to treat pain with opioids until the patient stopped complaining of pain. This resulted in lots of prescription opioids being available. Supply of prescription opioids have dried up, so fentanyl fills the niche. As does heroin, to a lesser extent.
That’s nothing. Just wait for Carfentanil. From an addiction recovery website -
“Carfentanil is a powerful derivative of fentanyl, a synthetic narcotic analgesic produced from morphine. While fentanyl is about 100 times more powerful than morphine, carfentanil is 100 times more potent than fentanyl, meaning it is 10,000 times more potent than morphine.”
Federal Register via Wikipedia"…and a 2016 annual aggregate manufacturing quota of 19 grams.[4]"
19 grams for an entire year. Pretty potent stuff, me thinks.
Are you actually saying that addicts ODing and killing themselves should be “considered a very good thing?”
So you are saying the reason why Oxycodone, hydromorphone, and morphine where so widespread was doctors where subscribing it more back than? Now doctors switched to Fentanyl?
Still why where there so many drug dealers selling Oxycontin/Oxycodone, hyrdromorphone AND morphine on the streets back than? Or like you say it was hard to make in underground lab so street dealers switch to Fentanyl because it is easy to make?
<<sigh>> Doctors did NOT switch to fentanyl. I said street chemists made it, to fill the demand for opioids that had previously been met by prescription diversion. Doctors were not prescribing a lot of fentanyl outside of hospital use. Some yes, but not much compared to other opioids.
Because they were able to get their hands on lots of diverted prescriptions for those drugs.
That’s what I said.
That’s not at all what he said.
Try reading it again. It’s only two sentences.