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Opioid Dealers Embrace the Dark Web To Send Deadly Drugs by Mail (nytimes.com)
Anonymous online sales are surging, and people are dying. Despite dozens of arrests, new merchants -- many based in Asia -- quickly pop up. From a report on the New York Times: In a growing number of arrests and overdoses, law enforcement officials say, the drugs are being bought online. Internet sales have allowed powerful synthetic opioids such as fentanyl -- the fastest-growing cause of overdoses nationwide -- to reach living rooms in nearly every region of the country, as they arrive in small packages in the mail (syndicated source). The authorities have been frustrated in their efforts to crack down on the trade because these sites generally exist on the so-called dark web, where buyers can visit anonymously using special browsers and make purchases with virtual currencies like Bitcoin. The problem of dark web sales appeared to have been stamped out in 2013, when the authorities took down the most famous online marketplace for drugs, known as Silk Road. But since then, countless successors have popped up, making the drugs readily available to tens of thousands of customers who would not otherwise have had access to them. Among the dead are two 13-year-olds, Grant Seaver and Ryan Ainsworth, who died last fall in the wealthy resort town of Park City, Utah, after taking a synthetic opioid known as U-47700 or Pinky. The boys had received the powder from another local teenager, who bought the drugs on the dark web using Bitcoin, according to the Park City police chief.
This is pretty much just propaganda. Do you seriously think that any doctor, having passed the MCAT, been accepted to medical school, passed medical school, then passed the USMLE, thought for a second a full agonist opioid (that had existed for decades, by the way, oxycodone was not invented in the 90s or 2000s) was not just as addictive as every other full agonist opioid? Not a chance. And the stronger formulation, OxyContin, being appropriate for those without tolerance? Nope, not a chance. Not even pill mills gave out OC40's or OC80's to people who hadn't already been building tolerance for years.
The marketing shift that DID make the difference, was increasing access to pain relief for those suffering chronic pain that wasn't from a terminal condition or cancer. And that was a good thing in principle. People shouldn't be forced to live in pain because of someone else's moral opinion on physical dependence, nor because someone else is abusing pharmaceuticals instead of street drugs. There were some critical errors, like not preventing multiple doctors from prescribing to the same patient, doctors not being allowed to discuss harm reduction strategies or treat instead of discharge people with abuse issues (not to mention the whole drug war- addicts scamming pain practices is a consequence of prohibition), and although made into a much bigger issue than it was, prescriptions for people with minor pain from small injuries (APAP combo products that couldn't be snorted or injected).
You're looking for the easy scapegoat, and ignoring the very real issue of under-treated pain and its consequences. And now the pendulum has swung back the other way, and more pain patients live in agony and more drug users get their drugs on the street instead of from a pharmacist. I hope that you or someone you love never finally ends their own life after suffering from preventable pain that relief from became unavailable because of people like you. But I fear that much like drug prohibition in general, that's the only way people will take a deeper look at the pros and cons of trying to enforce sobriety at the end of a gun.
In the case of fentanyl analogues, it's not just the illegality or the corresponding imprecision in dose. They're dangerous drugs when used in the hospital. I'm an anesthesiologist, and I barely use the stuff because of this. The line between "effectively treats pain" and "makes them stop breathing" is very, very small. When I give it, I have a breathing tube in place - I don't have to worry if someone stops breathing, because I can do it for them. I still don't often do it.
If we're going to ban any drugs at all, those should be at the top of the list.