Ioan Grillo's excellent 'Blood Gun Money' explains in detail the connections between gun shows in our border states and cartel brewed counterfeit fentanyl entering the U.S., traded for weapons purchased by cutout buyers at those gun shows.
The cartels now outgun the policia and in some areas even the military.
Do you really expect though, that the US government is going to do more than give lip service to controlling the flow of weapons? So far, the best they've offered is some more inspections of autos entering mexico from the United States, and some meaningless rhetoric. Frankly, I think Mexico should be launching drone strikes on US gun dealers.
It’s a bad time to be a heroin addict. As if heroin wasn’t dangerous enough, more and more users are dying from fentanyl overdoses. Fentanyl is so potent the difference between a dose and a lethal dose isn’t much, and often users think they are using heroin when it’s actually fentanyl.
My fantasy would be if she invited the heads of the pharmaceutical companies responsible for the opioid crisis to the White House for a dinner and had them exit via secret tunnels to a waiting helicopter for a one-way trip to prison.
Okay, that's my watered down fantasy that is safe for non-comments.
The heinous clash between America's unwinnable war on drugs and the profit-motivated mass marketing of Oxycontin initiating in the 1990's has served as the foundation to the deadly opioid use and abuse now scourging this nation.
Branding addicts as criminals has only exacerbated the situation.
Agree, treatment and recovery support is the only answer. The only thing that can replace an opioid addiction is a better alternative life. Punishment, loss of liberty, financial penalties only make an addict’s life worse, increasing the need to escape.
Summary: 125 million years ago, a mammal the size of a cat found attacking dino the size of a cocker spaniel. They both died during the throw-down from volcanic debris flow.
Good point. Where is this shit coming from? The Meth boom was fueled by pseudoephedrine being sold by the caseload by "legitimate" manufacturers. It isn't dudes in trailer homes making that stuff.
And whoever is lacing cocaine with fentanyl, whoever is making pills that look exactly like Xanax and other stuff but is actually fentanyl; that also isn't some dude on the corner slingin' $20 bags.
Just as the photos the DEA loves to publish showing forklift pallets stacked high with $100 bills. Where do the cartels get tens of thousands of $100 bills? Not at the ATM at the corner bodega, I bet.
So yes, she may very well be meeting with the actual heads of the actual fentanyl cartels.
I haven't been able to understand it. Why lace your supply with something deadly if you want people to keep buying? It doesn't make any sense to me at all.
I also don't understand how killing your customers who are addicted to your product is a smart business move. I'd want to keep my customers ALIVE, and coming back.
If the stuff people actually want - eg coke, meth - is in short supply you cut it with something more powerful. It can also be accidental contamination due to things like using the same kitchen scale to weigh fentanyl that you use for coke.
And I'm realizing now that could have been my brother.
He became addicted to opiates b/c of a back injury at work, and his physicians just kept shoving opiate Rxes at him. He had to be Narcanned twice in my mom's living room floor and would have died otherwise. And I don't even think that was from fentanyl, but just garden-variety opiates.
But it could have happened to him had he not gotten clean. :( :(
MSNBC wants us to hear what lawmakers think of the latest pending indictments of Trump. But they only want us to hear from lawmakers that are Republican which seems weird. Why is that? Why would you highlight three people, including MTG, that won't even admit that 1/6 even happened? How does that help your audience gain greater understanding of this news?
Some videos about Phoenix have been showing up on my YouTube feed. They basically show homeless people and hookers out on the street. Some of them focus on drug addicts. They call it the "blues", because the street fentanyl often shows up as little blue pills. Across the US, we're going to lose 80,000 or more souls to this drug this year. A whole lot of young people in their 20's and 30's just gone. I don't think you can go on like this as a society and not feel the impacts everywhere.
A friend's college age child just died after taking what they thought was a prescription pill of some kind but in fact was a counterfeit laced with fentanyl. An overdoes on an illicit drug is bad enough. But for someone to die from a drug they have no idea they are ingesting is particularly horrendous. Give 'em hell, Kamala.
I think Biden does give a flying fuck about it, seeing as how he's got his VP on it in a high-profile event. Reagan and Biden are about as different as they could be; as far as I can tell Reagan didn't care about anything except playing the role.
2. My concern is actually about the chronic pain patients who are being denied the relief they need to just navigate their lives without agony because other people abuse pain medications. I'd like to hear about that.
Going back a century, because the bougoise used opium and other pain relievers for recreation, this has always been a war between "better" pain relief medication and it's abuse. Plain old opium is still around, yet, outside of a few (mostly British or Commonwealth) nations, opium production is criminalized, while those countries outside the "global north" are priced out of obtaining the pain relief medication they need.
Given that each "new, improved" version of opium... Morphine, then Herion, then opiates like oxyconten, and now good ol fentinal, are sold as an alternative to what went before, and opium addiction is a relatively minor problem (and one known for centuries as is the treatment) legalizing opium for medical useage might lower the "need" for the more "advanced" drugs that just get more and more and more dangerous.
That pales in comparison to the numbers of pain patients humiliatingly treated as drug seekers by practitioners who are frightened of prosecution or pain patients who simply cannot get even what is prescribed.
The misery of their lives is not reversible with a dose of Narcan.
I'm not saying to not care about the adduicted - I'm saying to care a lot more than we do about those caught in the crossfire of this newest iteration of the drug issue.
Yup. Cheap heroin devastated Black communities in the 1950s thanks to the Mafia and the crooked cops, politicians and judges they paid off. But it wasn't until white suburban kids started ODing in the late 1960s that it became a drug "problem."
This isn't even a comment.
As usual, the consumer countries are blaming the producers for selling them what they crave.
Ioan Grillo's excellent 'Blood Gun Money' explains in detail the connections between gun shows in our border states and cartel brewed counterfeit fentanyl entering the U.S., traded for weapons purchased by cutout buyers at those gun shows.
The cartels now outgun the policia and in some areas even the military.
Read this book!
Do you really expect though, that the US government is going to do more than give lip service to controlling the flow of weapons? So far, the best they've offered is some more inspections of autos entering mexico from the United States, and some meaningless rhetoric. Frankly, I think Mexico should be launching drone strikes on US gun dealers.
It’s a bad time to be a heroin addict. As if heroin wasn’t dangerous enough, more and more users are dying from fentanyl overdoses. Fentanyl is so potent the difference between a dose and a lethal dose isn’t much, and often users think they are using heroin when it’s actually fentanyl.
fentanyl pushing drug cartels such as Purdue Pharma
How is she going to talk about fentanyl without talking about HUNTER BIDEN, hennngghhhh?
My fantasy would be if she invited the heads of the pharmaceutical companies responsible for the opioid crisis to the White House for a dinner and had them exit via secret tunnels to a waiting helicopter for a one-way trip to prison.
Okay, that's my watered down fantasy that is safe for non-comments.
The heinous clash between America's unwinnable war on drugs and the profit-motivated mass marketing of Oxycontin initiating in the 1990's has served as the foundation to the deadly opioid use and abuse now scourging this nation.
Branding addicts as criminals has only exacerbated the situation.
Agree, treatment and recovery support is the only answer. The only thing that can replace an opioid addiction is a better alternative life. Punishment, loss of liberty, financial penalties only make an addict’s life worse, increasing the need to escape.
But that doesn't punish people for the sin of getting addicted in the first place.
Random thought that I'm posting now because will probably forget before Open Thread.
"George Soros part of global, child trafficking, adrenochrome-harvesting cabal"
(Looks up current picture of George Soros.)
I don't think adrenochrome actually works.
I don't know ... George looks pretty good for 637 years old ...
Doesn't look a day over 620.
He's pretty good for 700.
GMTA
OT. I stab at thee from the depths of hell.
"‘Not always king’: fossil shows mammal sinking teeth into dinosaur
• Discovery in China challenges view of early mammals as ‘fodder’ for dinosaurs, say researchers
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jul/18/mesozoic-fossil-dinosaur-mammal-fight
Summary: 125 million years ago, a mammal the size of a cat found attacking dino the size of a cocker spaniel. They both died during the throw-down from volcanic debris flow.
But did the mammal have nasty, big, pointy teeth?
Like a bunny?
SINCE THE EARLY CRETACEOUS, CAT HAS FOUGHT DOG
Cats: Fucking Shit Up for 120 Million Years
Well ... more like a Rodent of Unusual Size.
Repenomamus robustus:
https://nixillustration.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/12-repenomamus.png
And worshipped for doing so by entire civilizations.
Like at my house, for instance.
My BFF has told me that when she dies, she wants to be reincarnated as one of my cats. I told her, "So do I."
You mean, she *isn't* meeting with the heads of the fentanyl cartels?
Good point. Where is this shit coming from? The Meth boom was fueled by pseudoephedrine being sold by the caseload by "legitimate" manufacturers. It isn't dudes in trailer homes making that stuff.
And whoever is lacing cocaine with fentanyl, whoever is making pills that look exactly like Xanax and other stuff but is actually fentanyl; that also isn't some dude on the corner slingin' $20 bags.
Just as the photos the DEA loves to publish showing forklift pallets stacked high with $100 bills. Where do the cartels get tens of thousands of $100 bills? Not at the ATM at the corner bodega, I bet.
So yes, she may very well be meeting with the actual heads of the actual fentanyl cartels.
Ioan Grillo lays it all out in 'Blood Gun Money', I can't recommend that book highly enough.
Who is doing this shit?
I haven't been able to understand it. Why lace your supply with something deadly if you want people to keep buying? It doesn't make any sense to me at all.
I also don't understand how killing your customers who are addicted to your product is a smart business move. I'd want to keep my customers ALIVE, and coming back.
If the stuff people actually want - eg coke, meth - is in short supply you cut it with something more powerful. It can also be accidental contamination due to things like using the same kitchen scale to weigh fentanyl that you use for coke.
Thank you! I wasn't aware this was what is happening. :(
You're welcome. It's a tragic situation which I only learned about thanks to my sponsor a few years ago.
And I'm realizing now that could have been my brother.
He became addicted to opiates b/c of a back injury at work, and his physicians just kept shoving opiate Rxes at him. He had to be Narcanned twice in my mom's living room floor and would have died otherwise. And I don't even think that was from fentanyl, but just garden-variety opiates.
But it could have happened to him had he not gotten clean. :( :(
Tolerance is a thing. More bang for the buck.
ShE's a CoP!!11
MSNBC wants us to hear what lawmakers think of the latest pending indictments of Trump. But they only want us to hear from lawmakers that are Republican which seems weird. Why is that? Why would you highlight three people, including MTG, that won't even admit that 1/6 even happened? How does that help your audience gain greater understanding of this news?
It's bullshit.
The media is going to eventually sell everyone down the river with this both sides bullshit.
One side is NOT legitimate right now and we shouldn't even be pretending they are.
Your use of the word "sell" is quite on point. Thank you!
All they seem to be interested in is the $$$$$.
I wonder if they will even feel bad when the ovens are fired up.
And I'm only partially jesting at this point.
They'll be writing thinkpieces while waiting for their turn against the wall.
Because they have their marching orders, see my non-comment reply below. The MSM is in the tank for fascists.
Because their owners want Donnie Dipshit to unleash uber rich fascism on America.
They believe they can pull it off. They HOPED Tiny D would be the saner, smarter fascist.
Indeed. Every current event must be reported with consideration of the feelings of our loudest crybabies.
Some videos about Phoenix have been showing up on my YouTube feed. They basically show homeless people and hookers out on the street. Some of them focus on drug addicts. They call it the "blues", because the street fentanyl often shows up as little blue pills. Across the US, we're going to lose 80,000 or more souls to this drug this year. A whole lot of young people in their 20's and 30's just gone. I don't think you can go on like this as a society and not feel the impacts everywhere.
A friend's college age child just died after taking what they thought was a prescription pill of some kind but in fact was a counterfeit laced with fentanyl. An overdoes on an illicit drug is bad enough. But for someone to die from a drug they have no idea they are ingesting is particularly horrendous. Give 'em hell, Kamala.
And, yeah. We need to do something about the despair that drives humans to this. :( :( :(
Welcome to a rerun of the 80s with gays dropping like flies and the President not giving a flying fuck about it.
I think Biden does give a flying fuck about it, seeing as how he's got his VP on it in a high-profile event. Reagan and Biden are about as different as they could be; as far as I can tell Reagan didn't care about anything except playing the role.
Aye. Though I think the demographics are a bit different now. Out of the ghetto and ravaging East Bumblefuck as well.
The people from East Bumblefuck (including many of my extended family) want to claim it's only an "urban" problem.
At least 4 people in my extended family have had opiate issues to the point of almost dying.
Sad for sure Phoenix.
Poor pup.
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/a-man-and-his-dog-are-rescued-after-being-lost-at-sea-for-three-months/
Looks like the doofi if the Seattle Times are being slashdotted or something.
Two cynical points:
1. "Drug crisis" = "Affects White people"
2. My concern is actually about the chronic pain patients who are being denied the relief they need to just navigate their lives without agony because other people abuse pain medications. I'd like to hear about that.
Going back a century, because the bougoise used opium and other pain relievers for recreation, this has always been a war between "better" pain relief medication and it's abuse. Plain old opium is still around, yet, outside of a few (mostly British or Commonwealth) nations, opium production is criminalized, while those countries outside the "global north" are priced out of obtaining the pain relief medication they need.
Given that each "new, improved" version of opium... Morphine, then Herion, then opiates like oxyconten, and now good ol fentinal, are sold as an alternative to what went before, and opium addiction is a relatively minor problem (and one known for centuries as is the treatment) legalizing opium for medical useage might lower the "need" for the more "advanced" drugs that just get more and more and more dangerous.
We're having nearly 100 people a month die of Fentanyl OD in San Francisco, so something pretty drastic needs to be done.
That pales in comparison to the numbers of pain patients humiliatingly treated as drug seekers by practitioners who are frightened of prosecution or pain patients who simply cannot get even what is prescribed.
The misery of their lives is not reversible with a dose of Narcan.
I'm not saying to not care about the adduicted - I'm saying to care a lot more than we do about those caught in the crossfire of this newest iteration of the drug issue.
That's a myth. Black Americans die to fentanyl overdose at much higher rates than white or Hispanic Americans.
The point here is that it's only a crisis if white people are dying. No one cares about Blahs or Hispanics. As far as the MSM is concerned.
Yup. Cheap heroin devastated Black communities in the 1950s thanks to the Mafia and the crooked cops, politicians and judges they paid off. But it wasn't until white suburban kids started ODing in the late 1960s that it became a drug "problem."
That's exactly what I meant.
“We Will Begin Shortly.” (hums elevator music)
I imagine the cheery "intermission" music from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
"We will now have a medium-sized intermission, in which small ice creams in very large boxes will be sold."
"ALBATROSS!"