Dark Web Dealers Voluntarily Ban Deadly Fentanyl (theguardian.com)

Major dark web drug suppliers have started to voluntarily ban the synthetic opioid fentanyl because it is too dangerous. "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," reports The Guardian. From the report: 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.

O'Brien said: "If they've got people selling very high-risk commodities then it's going to increase the risk to them. There are marketplaces that will not accept listings for weapons and explosives -- those are the ones that will not accept listings for fentanyl. Clearly, law enforcement would prioritize the supply of weapons, explosives and fentanyl over, for example, class C drugs -- and that might well be why they do this. "There are also drug users on the dark web who say on forums that they don't think it's right that people are selling fentanyl because it is dangerous and kills a lot of people."

Comments

Re:there is no such thing as "dark web"

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently they still sell LSD.

Re:there is no such thing as "dark web"

[Anonymous Coward]

And guns!

Don't surf the webtubes in the dark

[Anonymous Coward]

It might kill you.

Re:there is no such thing as "dark web"

[Vanyle]

Sure there is, i have seen plenty of spiders in the woods.

Time for a dark-darkweb

[Anonymous Coward]

For things too bad for the regular darkweb. I heard it's behind 7 proxies.

Re:Time for a dark-darkweb

[phantomflanflinger]

Time for an infra-black web, which you can only see by lowering your head and running hubwards into your monitor.

Re: Time for a dark-darkweb

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, most of what the media calls "the dark web" is more accurately the "gray web" or maybe the "underground web." Most of it is pretty easy to find with a minimum of effort, and there are search engines which do index it. Contrast that to actual dark networks, which are not indexed and not easily accessible at all.

Re: there is no such thing as "dark web"

[Anonymous Coward]

In general, there's a much lower abuse potential for psychedelics. These are drugs that aren't always even enjoyable. Often, those drugs are taken for therapeutic sessions or the purpose of gaining insight.

Nobody shoots dope to work with a therapist on their issues. You might have low dose clinics, but you take the dope to relieve the symptoms so you can be barely functional enough for counseling. Psychedelics offer an active benefit above and beyond sobriety for therapy. Also, they're not likely to result in harm in the way they're often used, in relatively controlled, familiar setttings, with others around to monitor youm

the high sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah it's a lot easier to smuggle but the high is not nearly as good as heroin. this is a good move for people who value quality.

It's the dose that makes the poison

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

Fentanyl actually has a fairly wide therapeutic index -- i.e. the dose that offers benefit vs. the dose that causes harm -- so it's fairly safe (at least as safe as a highly-addictive opioid can be) as far as prescription drugs go. IIRC acetaminophen (Tylenol) is actually easier to OD on. The problem is potency and the fact that pill pressers are buying pure fentanyl and trying to meter out the microscopic doses using crude tools.

It's easy to measure grams of a substance, so if 1 gram gets you high but 10 gram kills you, it's not hard to press out 1 gram pills and tell people to never take more than 3 of them.

Now imagine 1 microgram gets you high and 100 micrograms kills you. In terms of therapeutic index, it's actually 10 times safer. If you could reliably press out 1 microgram pills, nobody would ever accidentally OD on 100 pills. The problem is that joe schmoe pill pusher in his basement cannot accurately separate out 1 microgram of a pure substance, so he wants up cranking out pills that have anywhere from 3-50 micrograms of ingredients. You wind up with a bunch of pills where 2 of them might get you nicely really really high, but then another 2 will randomly kill you. Couple that with some people having high tolerance due to longtime use while other people are just starting out, one pill might be enough to kill a first time user if they're unlucky enough to get that one where joe pill pusher's hands slipped when he was pressing it.

The solution would be for the labs producing the stuff to only sell it in dilutions of 0.1% or so, but the market doesn't want that because mr. fentanyl smuggler only has to get one shipment from China through customs to make a million pills if he brings in the pure stuff. This is actually fentanyl's awesome market-winning feature -- its potency minimizes the smuggling risk, and this is why it's taken over the market from heroin in the U.S. for low-budget opioid addicts.

Of course the real truth of the matter is that opioid addiction is a fucking curse and the best thing to do is never ever start, but unfortunately big pharma likes it profits and creates tons of future fentanyl users every time it writes a new painkiller prescription. Next time your doctor considers writing you a scrip for some of the good stuff -- say sorry, I'll just take an aspirin and maybe smoke some weed.

Re: It's the dose that makes the poison

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent point on therapeutic index.

As an addendum to your dilution point, if you can't measure accurately at small scale, dilute it or cut it with something else, then measure at a larger scale where mistakes aren't as punishing. If you don't want an ultimately cut product, dissolve it in a solvent, then evaporate off the solvent, preferably recovering it for recycling.

Re: It's the dose that makes the poison

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

You're expecting responsible behavior and the maintenance of large quantities of dilute with strict quality control from some guy with unknown education working in a basement somewhere with no oversight, and a customer base that literally cannot say no.

He almost certainly doesn't *want* to kill his customers, but that doesn't mean he has the know-how and discipline to do a good job of it, and the shadowy nature of the job means you can't just go by yelp reviews.

Re:It's the dose that makes the poison

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The problem with Fentanyl isn't Fentanyl pills... it's Fentanyl spiked heroin/whatever. Cause that lets them cut the underlying drug more. So, you have heroin of unknown quality and it's too strong.

Part of it is the various tolerances, but a bigger problem is the difficultly measuring (as you point out) and evenly mixing the Fentanyl into the drug. Also, it's so damn potent that trying to clean up drugs left behind by addicts, even with gloves, can aerosolize enough to kill people. Like cops or bereaved parents.

A big part of the solution is Fentanyl testing kits for illegal drugs, to prove they are pure.

Re:It's the dose that makes the poison

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

Drug-detection kits should be sold in every drugstore, but that's not going to happen as it would be seen as somehow "enabling" drug use. The only detection kits the government will ever support over-the-counter are the kind that detect it only after a person has consumed them (i.e. too late to save the user, but good for persecution/prosecution of the user).

Re: It's the dose that makes the poison

[Anonymous Coward]

For carfentanyl the liquid dilution is the only feasible way I think. The lethal dose is only like a few grains of salt. So cutting it with another solid material will have a way to high sample variance.

Re: It's the dose that makes the poison

[Anonymous Coward]

If I look at the anti-drug propaganda^Wdocumentaries that get sent out on national geographic channel here, then yes, at least one dealer found that having some rando die from overdose actually ups the demand for his stuff, since it must surely be good. So he deliberately puts one extra strength in a batch. The strength of pure fentanyl means no ability to control the strenght, though, so that would mean your friendly neighbourhood scruples-free drug dealer can't limit it reliably to just one OD. And that's a problem.

When watching said propa^Wdocumentaries I occasionally idly wonder what it would involve to do a proper pill-running outfit. Buy the good stuff, dilute it properly, get well-defined and therefore reasonably safe pills, distribute packed up in marked baggies with batch numbers you can look up (without being easily traceable, like using tor or something). It involves the right machinery that's specialised but off-the-shelf. But setting up such an outfit and maintaining it while law enforcement does its level best to get you is so much harder than just the basement bullshit you end up with when you try to stay out of law enforcement's hands.

One more reason why *cough* certain *cough* governments should quit the prohibition-gone-drugs moral grandstanding, as it actively blocks many many ways in which this situation of dangerous drugs and dangerous use could be improved.

Re:It's the dose that makes the poison

[shplopt]

The potency is definitely a large part of the commercial appeal of fentanyl analogs - similar to the way beer gave way to liquor during prohibition - but I'd argue that an even bigger driver is that it's fully synthetic. Heroin, oxycodone, hydrocodone, etc. all rely on access to large quantities of poppy straw. Combine that with the proliferation of grey market Chinese and Indian labs and you've literally got a recipe for disaster.

There could be a time in the near future where it will be possible to "home brew" traditional opiates with genetically modified yeasts. I don't know how viable or realistic that scenario is, but it does sound like it will at least be technically possible very soon.

Meanwhile the FDA is spending a lot of time and energy trying to ban kratom, a plant which researchers hope will point the way to new analgesics that don't cause respiratory depression. Y'know, the thing that kills people.

Interesting times.

Re:It's the dose that makes the poison

[Luckyo]

So enable every neighbourhood kid to be a Fentanyl pusher when his dad loses his job. That's going to help things.

Have you ever read about Opium Wars and what opiates that are freely available do to a nation? There's a reason why China is the key supplier of this stuff. They know from first hand experience how large nations are undermined. And it's in their geopolitical interest to have Western majors to implode on themselves just like China imploded on itself due to opium in 1800s.

Re: It's the dose that makes the poison

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, a documentary on the opioid crisis suggested that intentionally adding relatively cheap carfentanyl (rhino/elephant tranquilizer, more powerful that fentanyl) to heroin is explicitly done *for the purpose of killing customers* as a manner of advertising that a dealer's dope is not cut with less-expensive inactive ingredients. Perverse incentives are at play for both the supply and demand sides of this market.

CAPTCHA: entice

Re: It's the dose that makes the poison

[GameboyRMH]

Sometimes they do want to kill a customer, as an advertising tactic. They intentionally slip a fatal dose of fentanyl into some heroin for example, and sell it to a customer they can afford to lose. This death sends up a beacon, making other junkies think that this dealer has "the good stuff" on the assumption that it was purity/potency that caused the overdose and not intentional contamination.

Re: It's the dose that makes the poison

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that drugs are illegal is proof enough to me that this generation is too stupid to guide itself into a good conclusion to this era. It's sad really, but the majority completely lack the ability to see the future and make good decisions.

Re: It's the dose that makes the poison

[Type44Q]

This is one of the few area in which I have zero experience... so why is it that I can tell you're standing right beside me??

Hint: it's the smell.

Re: It's the dose that makes the poison

[guruevi]

Therapeutics like these can't be diluted and subsequently recovered 'easily'. Hence why so many backyard drug producers end up killing themselves or blowing themselves up.

It's not 'hard' to buy the right stuff to measure correctly (you can buy them used for $1k, new for $10k), there is no controls or government watchdog to get the tools. Even the drugs themselves are relatively easy to obtain and 'lose' if you know the right connections and circumstances. But if you're smart enough to run an entire professional lab, you might as well go make $150-250k/year legally.

The primary problem is that you can't do it properly without a masters or PhD in chemistry and probably a host of other (sometimes vendor and drug-specific) training. You also need not just measurements but also test equipment and a whole host of checks and balances which at some point, you might as well buy the drug outright from a mass production facility.

Re: It's the dose that makes the poison

[Hognoxious]

That relies on the active ingredient being evenly distributed in the inert carrier, i.e. perfect mixing.

Re:It's the dose that makes the poison

[demonlapin]

Fentanyl is a terrible substance. It has its uses, but they are very limited. It's an extremely short-acting drug, so it doesn't provide good long-term pain relief unless used in a patch, in which case why not use extended-release morphine? It's really good for the induction of anesthesia, because it blunts the painful process of being intubated but doesn't last so long that it keeps you from breathing at the end of the case. Other than that, I don't use it on my patients, and I'm an anesthesiologist.

Dilution isn't a bad idea, and it's what we do - hospital fentanyl comes in 50 mcg/mL, so for one gram of solution you have 50 mcg of agent. 0.005%. Easy to fuck it up, or make it uneven. Even if you recrystallize it yourself to get clean product... it's risky as hell. I'd pump myself full of naloxone (opioid antagonist) before I'd even consider working with the powdered drug unless it was in a fully sealed drybox or similar.

I knew one guy who used to shoot fentanyl - the hospital-grade, known-strength stuff. He'd start an IV on himself. He'd then squirt a vial of naloxone into a small bag of saline, and hook that up to the IV. Then he would pinch it off and shoot up. If he passed out, the naloxone would start flowing, and he'd come back to life... that's roughly the level of precaution required when you know exactly what you're getting.

Re: It's the dose that makes the poison

[HornWumpus]

The lethal dose is one physical grain (not the unit of weight).

But you're right, the junkies will figure out how to dose carfentanil by dilution. Just a bunch more will die first.

Re:It's the dose that makes the poison

[HornWumpus]

The Chinese are nuts if they think half the labs production isn't going out the side door for domestic use.

Re:It's the dose that makes the poison

[Luckyo]

They know. That's why anyone who does this stuff and gets caught gets the noose. Chinese don't fuck around with drugs and drug pushers that don't toe the party line.

Re: It's the dose that makes the poison

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nuts.

Great comment.

Re: It's the dose that makes the poison

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha axis of Dr. Evil. I'll have to remember that one.

Re: It's the dose that makes the poison

[Anonymous Coward]

As always, anyone smart enough to run the operation as comprehensivly as you describe is smart enough to hold a good job and earn an honest crust.

Re:It's the dose that makes the poison

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why you were downvoted, but you're spot on with your observation re: kratom. The FDA and DEA have been putting forth a terrible amount of "concern" over the past few years.

Re:It's the dose that makes the poison

[gweihir]

There is also the problem of newbies that want to get rich quick and have no clue how things work. These may sell ODs simply because they are clueless.

Re:It's the dose that makes the poison

[pjt33]

Most of your post was informative and interesting, so thank you for that. But I disagree with the conclusion in the last paragraph. I learnt the hard way about 15 years ago that if you refuse to take strong enough painkillers for chronic pain the result is nerve sensitisation which means that the pain can continue for months after the root cause has healed. I'm currently being treated for a different chronic pain, and because of my previous experience I didn't hesitate when my doctor prescribed tramadol. However, I'm being disciplined in my use of it. When she tried lowering the dosage and the pain in the part of the day which wasn't covered began to be a real problem I asked permission before going back to the initial dosage. An earlier Guardian article about the opioid epidemic implies that part of the problem is people self-medicating an increased dosage.

Addiction is indeed a curse, but so is chronic pain. I think the correct conclusion should be to discuss changes in dosage with your doctor first, and if you experience symptoms of dependency when ending the treatment then go back to the doctor and ask about weaning off rather than going to the dark web.

Re: It's the dose that makes the poison

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need masters. I grew up in Eastern Europe. All that I need for such an operation was taught in high school chemistry classes

Re:It's the dose that makes the poison

[yes-but-no]

So you are saying someone else is reaping the harvest of big pharma. I'm sure big-pharma must be upset. They should find ways to write more n more stronger prescriptions and also ensure the law department does their job so the revenue stream keeps flowing-in and not to some poor smuggler.

Re:It's the dose that makes the poison

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a lot of work to get high

Re:It's the dose that makes the poison

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew one guy who used to shoot fentanyl - the hospital-grade, known-strength stuff. He'd start an IV on himself. He'd then squirt a vial of naloxone into a small bag of saline, and hook that up to the IV. Then he would pinch it off and shoot up. If he passed out, the naloxone would start flowing, and he'd come back to life... that's roughly the level of precaution required when you know exactly what you're getting.

Wow... that has got to be the smartest way to be stupid that I've ever heard of. Props to that guy, what a clever precaution. That sure gives a whole new meaning to the concept of a "dead man's switch".

CAPTCHA: invents

Re:It's the dose that makes the poison

[demonlapin]

He was one of two fentanyl-using anesthesiologists I've known. The other used it to soak gauze pads and then stuck them between cheek and gum, like he was dipping tobacco. Certainly an easier solution, and it results in slower absorption.

The guy in this story eventually relapsed and lost his DEA license. He ended up getting a job overseeing the preop nurses that get the basic history and evaluations on patients coming in for surgery at a big university hospital - that way, he can still kind-of practice anesthesia, but no exposure to his demon.

Re: It's the dose that makes the poison

[Anonymous Coward]

One more reason why *cough* certain *cough* governments should quit the prohibition-gone-drugs moral grandstanding, as it actively blocks many many ways in which this situation of dangerous drugs and dangerous use could be improved.

Only if you care about addicts. Others think "just let them die". There is the option of not using heroin. Those that use, are dead already.

Re: there is no such thing as "dark web"

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, no one is preventing anyone from trafficking in those wares, if they so choose. They're just not helping you do it.

This is nothing new. Most pot dealers would balk at the idea of selling fentanyl.

Re:there is no such thing as "dark web"

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure there is, i have seen plenty of spiders in the woods.

As far as "woods" go you have to keep in mind security related issues about surveillance log cabin in the woods. You know logging of the trees and forests of the human terrain. So concept of "spiders" is another fairy tale resembling those strange intimidating drones in Matrix. As far as "dark web" lulzboat goes you have to treat it as something that is indicating doublespeak doublethink and dual use technology. It is something that exists in some sort of capacity that is beyond comprehension. Think about Area 51, enormous underground facilities in helsinki or ottoman empire territory of turkey or iran, time travel to the future or past with a help of "courage" and mighty pig pens, tall tales as told by illiterate einstein fairies from NASA, etc.. You know they are signaling that they can see in the dark. So this web of theirs doesn't require interface. They are "interface". You know like those hallow aliens with light emanating from their eyes in the movie "the worlds end"

makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

The dark web doesn't have such a large economy because there is so many "evildoers" in the world, they are so large because tyrannical governments do things like make a wonderfully fragrant flower that grows with very little effort in very little time under almost any conditions out to be some sort of demon weed that must be eradicated.

Gangs only exist as a response to the fascist pig gang in blue.

The pigs wanna play war, and so, by government force, they get one.

captcha: antibody

good but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the bigger issue was that they were cutting heroin and other drugs with fentanyl and that given the obvious lack of high precision measurement and mixing what could easily happen is that a few gram "retail" package taken out of a larger batch could have a completely unknown amount of fentanyl in it.

Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

When even the illicit channels refuse a product, you know it's gotten bad.

That the US isn't going after China, Mexico, and even US mfgr's for mass fentanyl production, is pretty damning at this point.

At best, the US has done half measures to curtail this thing.

Re:Irony

[Luckyo]

It's not that product is bad. It's that risk/reward ratio is getting too weighted towards risk.

No officer

[fibonacci8]

We're not dealing in fentanyl any more, honest!

Re:Societal ills

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

What if the user got hooked on opiods in the first place because his government-sanctioned doctor prescribed him drugs from a government-sanctioned pharmaceutical manufacturer?

Near gibberish

[BankRobberMBA]

I suspect that the OP is a programmer trying to build a chatbot/native language spambot and testing its output on Slashdot. A simple/simpleminded fitness function could count the replies garnered by each post. I have noticed a fair number of posts recently that are far outside the 'normal' slashdot weirdness. Interestingly, more recent posts are less incoherent, so maybe it's really working. I don't know what happens when it reaches coherence, though.

Re: Near gibberish

[Anonymous Coward]

You donâ(TM)t wanna know =)

Re:Near gibberish

[mirthful1]

Exactly what a bot would say ;)

Re: Near gibberish

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't decide if I'm proud of you for sticking to your guns or if I'm glad the system has filtered you.

On one hand it's great that you have an opinion based on reason and you're sticking to it despite it not being popular.

But it's just a little too far out there for me to want to read it. If you sold out and backed off by about 30 percent some people (like me) might find your arguments would be edgy and compelling.

Re: Near gibberish

[Anonymous Coward]

(Continued)

Upon more consideration, it's a complex free speech issue: on one hand you're free to say whatever you want. If people down vote you, you can still speak.

But that doesn't mean people have to listen to it. So there's limits.

If you want people to want to hear you (and that's demonstrated by the fact that you're posting), you might have to compromise.

Re: Near gibberish

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you run out of your Fentanyl?

Re:Near gibberish

[BankRobberMBA]

Nice!

Re: Near gibberish

[Anonymous Coward]

no you can't hide red colored rainbow hands behind the systematic following of the orders that you claim are issued by the new world for the benefit of the glorious commonwealth of the old world. You know if you look at the names connected to slashdot it's obvious red flag signal that they are ones that usually are coming with the sword as part of their swastika worshiping "faith". If you pay attention to all the strange neighborhood activity of building humongous monuments in indochina - its not out of the question that hitler gold train disappeared there together with those rainbow rambos of special forces. It's some sort of depot of nazi gold trains. Special forces of ghurkas come in mind, french foreign legion, africanized killer seabees of seaorg, etc... Notice those red hands are attached to red shoes diaries of kamasutra warfare, red necks of flying dutchmen, red cross of latin speaking frankenstein crossers, etc.. But that color red is not even 1% of the visible rainbow spectrum of orange colored rube goldberg machinery.
I don't understand your approach to judging people by measuring their "arguments" in percents. You're making mistake treating my comments by using some strange system of jumping the sharks with lasers. In reality i didn't say anything. Dog didn't bark yet you're wagging something. You're suffering from mental health issues. You're seeing things. In your defense probably very clearly as that "seeing" is augmented. So in this case slashdot just like any other similar "community" is using threads for threading on people. You know angling the ascent, fishing plenty of fish, taking the scalps of the targets (clubs, diamonds, spades, hearts and minds), etc..
So as far as "people" and "hearing" goes it's something that you don't have anything to show for yourself. It's tell tale sign that CIA lemon party gestapo performed genocide and holocaust on biblical proportions - no child is left behind. So if there are no people left except pervertariat and crippled mental patients - it's your turn to listen. You're one of the alpha's who bet and gamble - the fittest of the no fit to survive this rainbowlutionary revolutionary evolution. Cooked books will not protect you from cooking, even if you're capable of cooking top notch command and control code. You like it or not. You can't run and you can't hide especially if you have nobody to ask and nobody to tell. Welcome to the global compact sword of killing yourself. Notice if you're compacting something - it's elementary physics of illiterate einsteins - such action generates friction and heat. In other words "global compact" is synonymous, interchangeable or paralel with concept of thermonuclear games of "global WARming".
Even if you were under some impressions about immortality - it matters not. You're immortal until you're not.
p.s. My 10 comment limit is up, but it seems to be timed on the sliding scale.

Re: Near gibberish

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand free speech then.
It's about preventing the government from shutting you up, not other people or property owners. They can censor you on their property all they want.

Re: Near gibberish

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand free speech perfectly.

You seem to be overly concerned with the legal boundaries. Free speech is an important issue beyond its legal state.

Re: Near gibberish

[Anonymous Coward]

op here. "free speech" is not exactly an issue in times of fake news. You know it's equality regime where even war equals peace, freedom equals slavery, ignorance equals strength, etc.. There is nothing left for nobody to say if the new world is being run according to following orders of doctrines "you're with us or with the terrorists". You know the attack is engineered to look like as if its borrowing heavily from wisdom of stanford prison experiment, but i'm not talking about dividing the people - i'm only talking about alchemy of the present "authority" that rides on the notion of the past towards back to the future. Yes the tar budget shitbags are that advanced. Everyone is targeted as the "army of one" who can be all they can be. Even if you're in the army - it's code red of no soup for you camp of killing yourself. It's very powerful method to the madness. It can be scaled to any size and shape. Think about slashdot moderation system. We don't know what goes on behind the scene, but what is important what you think goes behind the scenes trying to understand what is expected from you, trying to fit in, cause and effect, etc.. In reality you can't discount an option that there are no mods whatsoever. Only attendants who "check" if you're tall enough to ride this or that ride. You know it's about ensuring fairness of the fair. Imagine going to lunapark on your vacation, spending lots of money for traveling and hotel, paying good money for passes, waiting in long lines, etc.. and some shitbags stands and disturbs your time of endless "pleasures". That is ideal world of how slashdot sees itself. Stark reality it resembles more like that ending scene in lady gaga video about "bad romance". So the fair is just exterior hiding concentration camp. Interning people with internet. You know like that winning reality of bath lady in movie about all work and no play and dull boys.

Re: Near gibberish

[HornWumpus]

Sure, but they lose any common carrier protections when they do.

Should anyhow, otherwise: Why not?

Re: Near gibberish

[cwatts]

Where is the "unintelligible gibberish" filter?

Re: Near gibberish

[Anonymous Coward]

No, op sounds a LOT like a paranoid schizophrenic relative of mine....

Re: Near gibberish

[Anonymous Coward]

your comment sounds like testimony of jehovah witnesses. now you have to ask yourself if your friend was schizophrenic before he got entangled in your web of friendliness?

Re: Near gibberish

[Anonymous Coward]

The first amendment is about preventing the government from shutting you up. Free speech extends far beyond the first amendment or any legal construct. It's an ideology. And crowds of people on twitter trying to get you fired for saying something they disagree with is absolutely anti-free speech. It's just not a violation of any legal constructs.

It makes sense...

[SvnLyrBrto]

Drug dealers are not, by preference, killers. They're business owners. And they don't want corpses. They want repeat customers. And you can't go back for more if you're dead from an overdose.

Re:It makes sense...

[rogoshen1]

not to mention the unwanted attention a corpse will bring.

Re:It makes sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

>Drug dealers are not, by preference, killers. They're business owners.
The "business owner" term elevates drug dealers, some of which are absolute scum bags at the street level, to an air of respectability which they don't deserve.
In practice some dealers will just rob you instead of selling you drugs because they are also armed petty criminal scumbags who see an easy score. This sort of thing has happened to multiple people I know.
The libertarian view that drug dealers want repeat customers, not dead customers, is mostly just a bunch of words. Projecting your views onto people who don't share them, or are simply too viciously stupid to understand economic consequences, is what leads to Libertarian Disappointment. If asked directly, they could legitimately say that losing a customer here or there makes no almost no difference to them, and they'd be right.
Kids are still dying from street fentanyl-laced drugs and have been for years, by now the street dealers "should know better," but they don't. Because they don't think like you.

Re:It makes sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

While I don't necessarily disagree with that, people OD on stuff all the time on relatively safe drugs/medicine. So, going in with the idea that you have to limit the number of corpses per se to avoid detection by police doesn't sound like the highest priority. At some level, the presumption is the police are already trying to infiltrate and track sellers even if there's few to no corpses just because the potential for corpses seems high.

Instead, I'd argue that you may be right for a different reason. The police and media have a habit of inflating any potential risk or danger when they want to stamp out that behavior (or just for ratings). So, the unwanted attention of a corpse may have more to do with trying to limit the ammunition that might discourage people from buying from drug dealers who so eagerly seem to sell you substances that could readily kill you. It's bad for business if you as a drug dealer don't seem to care about your product and your customer.

Re: It makes sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of customers arenâ(TM)t loyal to their dealers and switch at any slight provocation

Re:It makes sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep.

Drug rip-offs are routine in this "business". The crooked dealers aren't looking to build up a "clientele", they looking to get THEIR fix for the night.

Re:It makes sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

After the hundredth time you'll be a corpse. But that is ok.

Re:It makes sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are wrong in that while it may not make any difference to a dealer financially that some of his customers die that doesn't mean drug dealers are out to kill or don't care. I sell computer parts and I don't aim to piss off customers. I do care even if a small percentage of customers aren't worth the effort. Some people though just can't be helped and I have no qualm about telling them to fuck off. They don't matter financially, but had they just been pleasant to begin with I'd have been happy to help them resolve whatever issue they had. I can't see why that wouldn't be true for drug dealers and most people in general. Certainly a small percentage of drug dealers are going to be a problem. However that doesn't mean all drug dealers are going to be a problem or out to kill for profit.

The real problem lies in the underground nature and difficulty in producing the drugs because of law enforcement action. Some of these problems were beginning to get address by the free market (ie the original Silk Road), but law enforcement insistence and continued attack on the free market has had a negative impact on these sorts of efforts.

The problem was never really these drugs or an ability to get them. The problem has always been upstream. The lack of proper pain management controls. If individuals are in pain they are going to do whatever it takes to get that pain under control. If you give a person pills and direct them to take those pills without sound advice on how to take them and the danger in doing so and they then get addicted to them you created the problem. If you don't then provide a path to continue access to safer forms of the pill (ie known dosages) you (or really the government) create a danger to the patient. You might be able to ween yourself off this stuff, but its going to be much more difficult when you are being treated as the criminal and not being given what I'd call proper care. Desperate people will do desperate things. It's that simple. So stop making people desperate by working with them rather than forcing them into a corner and arresting those who are trying to help them (drug dealers and drug users).

Re: It makes sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

Again. Projecting your soft middle class values onto criminals. The best you can say is that dark web dealers voluntarily stop selling fentanyl. Your lived experience doesnâ(TM)t speak for actual criminals.

Re: It makes sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that (almost paradoxically) reinforces the point. If you're regularly trying to choose a new dealer, you rely upon what the new dealer is known for. The same phenomenon can be observed with ebay/amazon sellers where many people choose cheap over reliable brand, but many don't go as far as to simply look at cheapest without consideration. It's why review gaming is such a nasty issue on amazon. If you believe the same is true on the dark web, the next best thing to do look at is the breathe and content of their shop stock. People who peddle in poison aren't people you want to take a chance with.

Re:It makes sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

That being said, you've now got a monopoly on the market is you are the sole sales person in distribution

Just don't get caught...you're the sole sales person.

Now imagine the deadly potency of homeopathics...

[ffkom]

where the effect becomes stronger with dilution, so you can easily accidentally kill your patient when re-using any equipment that came into contact with some substance before.

Ok, just joking here, Homeopathy is fraudulent quackery, and of course there is no such thing as increasing effect with increasing dilution.

Re: there is no such thing as "dark web"

[sound vision]

There are actually a lot of people, almost everywhere, trying to prevent you from doing anything of the sort.

Re:Societal ills

[PPH]

That comes down to a failure of the healthcare/insurance industry. If you, as a doctor, prescribe opioids, then you should follow up 100% of those patients with post treatment care and counseling. To make sure they get off the drugs you gave them. If insurance companies and drug manufacturers were on the hook for such widespread coverage, perhaps they wouldn't be so quick to push their junk for any old complaints.

If I broke my arm and my orthopedist put it in a cast, I'd expect him to remove that cast in a few weeks. As a necessary part of my treatment.

Re:Now imagine the deadly potency of homeopathics.

[Anonymous Coward]

Drowning?

Re:Societal ills

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

You might be less likely to want that cast in the first place if it were shown that casts resulted in mass uncontrollable mummification fetishes that caused millions of suffocations worldwide and tens of millions more people unable to function in society because they can't help but bind themselves in bandages and plaster to even stay sane for a day.

Re: there is no such thing as "dark web"

[ShanghaiBill]

Most pot dealers would balk at the idea of selling fentanyl.

That is good. We may not have politicians who act in our best interest, but at least we can count on the drug dealers to provide moral leadership.

Re: there is no such thing as "dark web"

[Anonymous Coward]

And the gateway drug codeine. I wanna see which pill is longer

ancap society ftw

[Anonymous Coward]

And you big government bootlickers said that an anarcho-capitalist society couldn't work. Checkmate statists

Sure they did.

[Anonymous Coward]

So.... gullible.

head-exploding oxymoron

[Anonymous Coward]

how does the dark web ban anything? it's the DARK WEB where anything goes and anyone can do anything they want outside of any law or nation-state

Re: there is no such thing as "dark web"

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you snort LSD?

Libertarians are redeemed

[Anonymous Coward]

See? The free market doesn't need the government to regulate itself.

Re:Libertarians are redeemed

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's irresponsible behaviour and needless regulation. They'll just drive people to the blacker market and the deepest webs. Those junkies will get their fix one way or another. It'd really be best to acknowledge the problem and bring it out into the light of the black market so it can be handled by free-market forces. Just who do these black market tycoons think they are? I didn't vote for them. /s

Re:Societal ills

[ceoyoyo]

Physicians have really managed to dodge responsibility on this one. Opioids are prescription drugs; physicians are therefore the assigned gatekeepers, responsible for making sure the drugs they prescribe help rather than hurt.

And yet the media writes stories about evil pharma and physicians who say they didn't know opioids were addictive.

Chinese just made fentanyl illegal thanks Trump!

[Anonymous Coward]

You won't see that in the fakenews, but during the trade negotiation with China at the G20 he managed to get China to make fentanyl a controlled substance. Previously it and its precursors were legal in China. My feeling is these dark web dealers were sourcing from China and their supplier just dried up... Thank you Based Trump!

I'll bite...

[fibonacci8]

the drags [sic] on [sic] society

Fine, we'll begin with people who don't understand how to use the term "dregs of society" when the context presents itself. Any number of people in that category can be removed from the category by explaining the mistake. Not only that, but the problem can be resolved without resorting to unethical extermination.

Re:I'll bite...

[Anonymous Coward]

there are dregs of society, and drags on society. they are not mutually exclusive, but can overlap.

reply

[gDLL]

Including waging war on other dark web sellers :)

Re: there is no such thing as "dark web"

[Anonymous Coward]

lol damnit made me laugh!

At least we don't have to worry about human trafficking anymore either. Because people ar moral and would never ever do something so dangerous, exploitative, destructive, or ... wait, that's 100% NOT how people are at all!

Re:It makes sense... to not get killed, either

[cirby]

Not to mention, of course, that they're not in love with being executed.

This week's move by China (as a result of Trump pushing the issue in trade talks) to criminalize fentanyl puts a helluva lot of risk back in the made-in-China drug business, as far as fentanyl goes...

I think that is the REAL reason

[SuperKendall]

The news is that Dark Web dealers just decided to drop it, because reasons...

But the timing is such that it just HAPPENED to occur at the same time Trump had China make it a controlled substance...

Coincidence? No way.

Re:I think that is the REAL reason

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know a market I use that didn't ban Fent more like a year or more ago. Why it's even an article now is quite confusing, unless they only just learned of this

Re:I think that is the REAL reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, those dealers don't want to be charged with manslaughter when a bunch of junkies croak.

Re:I think that is the REAL reason

[jrumney]

China also started banning precursors and Fentanyl itself more than a year ago, since then they've been working on adjusting the laws to cover analogs and cover more of the precursors. Trump wants to take credit for this, but China has its own reasons to ban a drug that causes as much destruction in China as outside.

Re: I think that is the REAL reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you are more on the sort of grayish web. If you were trusted by the right people on the inside you would be invited in to the real dark web.

Dark web bans

[BankRobberMBA]

The "dark web" didn't ban anything. Several markets on the dark web have banned fentanyl sales.

The markets are created and run by individuals or small organizations that facilitate sales (typically by aggregating the sellers together and providing/arranging payment and escrow services). These are basically the eBays of the dark web, like the original Silk Road site and its many successors.

The people running the markets have the absolute power to control what items or services can be bought and sold on their markets. For instance, many markets choose not to allow the sale of fully automatic weapons. Without outside regulation, you can immediately identify what market runners consider to be morally acceptable and what they do not.

Considering the investigative resources applied to the original Silk Road investigation, it is no wonder that the markets are showing some risk aversion.

Well aren't they special?

[AndyKron]

So they're doing it, not because it harms people, but because it's too risky for them. Well aren't they special?

Re:Well aren't they special?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your point?
Never watched Goodfellas?

The boss says "Don't sell the drugs because you'll bring the heat on us."
He sells the drugs. The heat is on. Jail, death and witness protection program is the result.

Apologies

[nehumanuscrede]

The dealers are only looking out for their business model, nothing more. They have come to realize that dead users doth not repeat customers make.

This will sound cold but I have a hard time generating any sympathy for those who OD on opioids or any drug tbh.

If you're dumb enough to trust a substance purchased in a back alley or street corner from your local model citizen drug dealer, well. . . . Darwin has a law you should familiarize yourself with.

Even legitimate drugs have their risks and, if you bother to read the side effects, you might think twice about taking those as well.

My docs want me to start one whose potential side effects include:

Blood clots
Stroke
Heart Attack
Cancer
Death

I think I'll pass thanks.

The opioid epidemic will sort itself out especially if mixing an insanity level drug like fentanyl into the products being sold.

Eventually they're going to run out of drug users.

Live ones anyway.

Re:Apologies

[Actually, I do RTFA]

So, you don't understand probabilities. Because you listed a bunch of "potential side effects". But if those happen 1 in a billion times, and they solve a real problem (fix a condition that makes your life miserable, or just cuts your risk of heart attack in half) it's more than worth it. By focusing solely on possibilities, and not probabilities, you're making your life worse.

You also have no idea how the drug crisis started. People didn't start with heroin. Most times, they got addicted to oxy or something else prescribed, then moved to street drugs when their doctor wouldn't refill their prescription or because heroin is 1/10th the price.

Re: there is no such thing as "dark web"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes you can take acid in any mucous membrane.

Re:Now imagine the deadly potency of homeopathics.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the solvent allows the drug to hit more receptors, it would allow increased effect with dilution to a certain limit.

Said the Trump apologist.

[Anonymous Coward]

". We may not have politicians who act in our best interest " - Said the Trump apologist.

Yeah... nah

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would they? Itâ(TM)s a great earner.

Re:Chinese just made fentanyl illegal thanks Trump

[jrumney]

The supply didn't dry up, it has moved across the border to Myanmar. It is in no one's interest to kill their own customers. I think this rather than fear of law enforcement (law enforcement attention is going to be attracted by trade in any drug) is what is really behind the ban.

What is...

[Anonymous Coward]

...a "mass casualty firearm"?

Re: But Poohbear's Heroin A-OK

[Anonymous Coward]

Its perfectly acceptable to profit from drugs in China if youre a member of the ruling party families, just like the Bushes in the USA.

Your Mother Wishes She Aborted You

[Anonymous Coward]

.: it should be legal to kill you.

Youre shit.

Re:Your Mother Wishes She Aborted You

[Anonymous Coward]

You mother is a whore! You should kill yourself! You are an SJW-MAGA-FAG-LGBTO-Pedophile! You are less than worthless. Go into your room and hand yourself. Stop diddling children you worthless prick!

Re:Your Mother Wishes She Aborted You

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude! I'm loving this! Your angry little narcissistic outbursts get a default higher score than your original shit takes because you suck that much. And in the process you prove that all of your spazzing about anonymous posts being dishonorable and for weak cowards was nothing more than auto-fellatio.

Re:Your Mother Wishes She Aborted You

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I am unable to respond to your crap due to being censored, I am forced to post anonymously. That is completely different than our faggoty, worthless, cowardly, ass. You are a failure in life. May you and all your progeny for 50 generations die young of horrible, rotting, unstoppable cancer that takes months to kill you while you are in pain and agony forever. I call upon the devil himself to inflict this curse upon you! Beelzebub will curse your family for 50 generations. Yay Religion!

Re:Your Mother Wishes She Aborted You

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I am unable to respond to your crap due to being censored,

Your gaslighting doesn't work here, you mental weakling. If you were being censored, nobody could see your post to mock it in the first place. You are such a sad little loser in life, got nobody who respects you, everybody you see each day is laughing behind your back dude, they all know you are an impotent hater who has done absolutely nothing with his life because he was a born loser.

Re:Your Mother Wishes She Aborted You

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh look, now you are posting with an account. I guess that means that what you have to say is unimportant now, right?

Its pretty funny though. I think that might be your longest rant yet. A hit dog will holler -- and everyone will laugh even harder.

Re:Your Mother Wishes She Aborted You

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol! You are hilarious. The site is censoring you with your account, but not me who isn't even logged in. Yes everybody is conspiring against you. You keep getting more and more pathetic with each post. We are laughing our asses off because of your mewling weakness.

Re:Your Mother Wishes She Aborted You

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop sucking dicks! You are disgusting. You are a coward. If you had any balls, you'd post under your name. But, all you can do is snipe from the safety of anonymity, like the cowarrdly, girly, faggoty, sjw, maga-faga that you are! I'm laughing at you. There is no "we" that you mention. Your action figures that you shove up your ass and lick clean for sexual gratification are not other people dumbass!

Yes, I am "Gerald Edward Butler" posting anonymously because I am once again being censored by this site. Whiny anti-american fuck-tards are free to speak, but, American Men are censored. Stand up American Male. Put them down. It is time to RISE UP, RISE UP, RISE UP! Take over. Bring the violence. Put a stop to these fuckers!

Re:Your Mother Wishes She Aborted You

[Anonymous Coward]

Back to AC again. I guess that conspiracy theory wasn't working out? Did you gaslight yourself? We are all still laughing at you. Everybody you see laughs after you pass by. I'm surprised you don't hear it. Or is it that you just dont want to hear it because you are too much of a pussy to do anything about it, so you slink off to your basement to act like a tough guy on teh internetz. You aren't fooling anyone you sad sack.

Re:Your Mother Wishes She Aborted You

[Anonymous Coward]

What's your fucking point? You don't like the words I use? So fucking what. I could give a rats ass what you think. All the CHILD MOLESTERS USING STOLEN IDENTITIES who can't be bothered to put their names to their words can fuck themselves. Also, you fucking pieces of shit who want to dictate what language people can use can fuck yourselves too. You are my mortal enemy. The time has come for violence. You and yours are on one side me and those who value freedom of expression are on the other. You seek to undermine democracy and freedom by restricting speech. I will oppose you. Violently if necessary. Simple as that. This is a war. You will lose.

— the pathetic living punchline that calls itself gerald butler

Re:Your Mother Wishes She Aborted You

[Anonymous Coward]

In the words of Nikita Kruschev, "We will bury you!" You are anti-american garbage

You are quoting a soviet in order to accuse someone of being anti-american. Woah man, you better get your blood levels checked because I think you may have suffering from a fatal irony overdose.

Re:Your Mother Wishes She Aborted You

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Reek! Why haven't you posted today? I need someone to make me laugh. Get to it! Spew some more self-hating nonsense already, boy!

Re:Your Mother Wishes She Aborted You

[Anonymous Coward]

Waaaaah! Your pussy hurts? Did da bad man make you cwy? Waaaaah!

Re:Your Mother Wishes She Aborted You

[Anonymous Coward]

Your presence on earth are not welcome. Please leave. Preferably by slitting your own throat and drowning in your own blood.

Be careful not to cut the dick off the guys penis that is down your throat though.

— the pathetic living punchline that calls itself gerald butler

Re:Your Mother Wishes She Aborted You

[Anonymous Coward]

Man you are terrible at insults and trolling. Go back to grade-school and practice some "Your Mama" jokes and leave the insulting/trolling to the professionals.

Re:Make it Legal!

[Anonymous Coward]

W--aaaaaah! The CHILD MOLESTING IMPERSONATOR COWARD missed his chance to sexually assault and humiliate another prepubescent boy tonight! Go Fuck Yourself! You suck at trolling.

When you grow a pair and can stand up and stand behind your words you might actually be a worthwhile human being. Until then, you are garbage to be trampled under my feet.

Fuck Off!

— the pathetic living punchline calling himself gerald butler

Re:there is no such thing as "dark web"

[Narcocide]

For the most part you sound like a raving lunatic, but I happen to agree with you about the AOL thing.

Not so simple for high-potency compounds

[Wdi]

Perfect solid mixing is practically impossible with non-professional equipment. It starts with requiring all grains to be far smaller than the lethal dose, and no accumulation in layers, nooks of the apparatus, etc. Liquid mixing is better, but also more complicated on second sight - i.e. you should use a clean room to exclude dust particles which could selectively adsorb the active substance in lethal concentration, and then end up in the pill. Not exactly the type of set-up you would expect in a backyard operation.

Re: there is no such thing as "dark web"

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand what you are made often US. In most of Europe I can legally buy codeine containing pills over the counter. Basically Excedrine + codeine. When I had wisdom teeth extracted in US in 2017, the oxy that the surgeon prescribed had the effect of sugar candy in pain. I cracked open a pack of 10 codeine containing pills that I had brought from Europe and that had expired in 2013 and took 1, with a sachet of nimezulide (also over the counter in EU) that had expired in 2011. This took care of the pain to manageable level for about 16 hours. In total I took 3 pills containing codeine over 3 days. The other 7 pills are still in the blister in the box.
How come only US has so many effective pain killers classified, and how come people actually get high on them, to the point of speaking of opidemic? What's defective in the people here?

Re: But Poohbear's Heroin A-OK

[Luckyo]

That's not how Chinese system works. They literally don't have ruling families on a principle. If you're a member of the elite, your children just get a shot at ruling a small township in the middle of nowhere.

After that, it's almost all merit if they want to advance, which is why they largely lack actual dynasties. And if you fuck with drugs beyond what party leadership approves of (i.e. sabotage of geopolitical opponents) and someone high up finds out, it's not just noose for you. It's exile from party leadership for the father. You're certainly allowed to do dirty things for the state, which is viewed as patriotic. But the moment you turn that against the interests of the state and someone high up finds out, you're just fucked.

Tylenol is NOT easier to OD on.

[denzacar]

Acetaminophen/Tylenol/Paracetamol is NOT easier to overdose on.

Fentanyl has an LD of 3.1 mg/kg in rats, and 0.03 mg/kg in monkeys.
Tylenol has an LD of 338 mg/kg in mice (oral); 1944 mg/kg in rats (oral).

I.e. It is much easier to OD on fentanyl. BUT... and this is the part people don't IIRC...

There ARE more OD's on tylenol than on fentanyl... primarily cause it is so common and cause a lot of those happen with small children, due to their weight ratios being more favorable for an overdose.
BUT... and it's a big one... nearly all those overdoses on tylenol ARE NOT FATAL.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-en...

Paracetamol overdoses

About 50,000 people are admitted to hospital each year in the UK due to overdosing on paracetamol
According to the Office of National Statistics 219 deaths in 2016 were linked to paracetamol, up from 182 in 2012
Pills are usually 500mg, and over-the-counter purchases are restricted
The British Medical Journal says any dose of more than 4g or 75mg/kg over 24 hours for an adult is classed as an overdose
Overdosing on the drug can seriously or fatally damage the liver
Intravenous acetylcysteine is used to treat overdoses and treat hepatotoxicity

Also, if you're munching 500mg tablets four times a day to kill the pain or fever, you're already half way to what constitutes an overdose - though it is clearly FAR from an LD, even in mice.
I.e. People are "overdosing" on tylenol in a very "better safe than sorry" use of the term "overdose".

Meanwhile, DEATHS from overdosing on fentanyl in the US and its analogues has gone up from ~6000 in 2014, ~10000 in 2015, ~19000 in 2016 to ~29000 in 2017.

But have no fear. Trump has the best vaguely human-shaped leftover protoplasm working on it.
And it has already found the cure! Amazingly - it's ice cream and fries! Whodathunkit!

It's really tragic actually...
To think that thousand of lives could have been saved if only someone got those people to a McDonald's in time...
Who knew it was really that simple?

The real reason

[DaveV1.0]

Their customer base is shrinking due to deaths. They don't have consciences, they have business reasons only.

Awwww.....

[CyberSnyder]

That's really sweet of them.

Cus the Bible says! *Thump* *thump*

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of a time in my misspent youth, taking my last oxy on the plane from San Francisco to Madrid and from there on to Ibiza. Bad idea going on vacation on withdrawal, but upon learning that codeine is perfectly legal in much of Spain including Ibiza there we were at la farmacia trying to explain in very broken Spanish to the pharmacy workers who only spoke very broken English that we wanted to buy codeÃna for our cough. *Coughing* They finally figured it out and said ah, pasbronchial! Yeah! We must have been downing 3 or 4 bottles a day of the stuff and even hitting up different farmacias so they wouldn't cut us off or sell out of it, since I had also read they can refuse to sell it to you if they suspect you're downing it by the bottle as we were. It took the edge off a little bit but it was still pretty fucking miserable for the first few days.

Well after a few attempts at methadone detox i finally got off the shit years ago and it's not even fun anymore, but our drug laws are basically designed to kill users. This is all rooted in our Puritanical culture. Anything fun or enjoyable is sinful and therefore must be prevented by the Bible thumpers who take pride in being as miserable as Job.

Personally, I got started because after smoking tons of weed and dropping tons of acid and shrooms and blowing through tons of coke in college and never having anything terribly awful happen as a result of it, I had come to believe that everything the government says about drugs was a complete lie. Well that isn't entirely the case, most of it is a complete lie, but opioids really are awful and insidiously addictive drugs. You start with a couple Vicodin a day and next thing you know you're roaming the streets of San Francisco looking for heroin and downing bottles of Spanish cough syrup because drug dealers in Ibiza only sell ecstasy, coke, and hash, no opioids whatsoever.

They're this forbidden fruit that people get started on out of despair or sheer boredom, and then once they're addicted, the government tries to kill them instead of help them because it's not seen as purely a health matter as in Western Europe, it's a criminal and moral imperative to punish people as harshly as possible just like Eve who dared taste the forbidden fruit.

Well it was a rough vacation but thanks to the magic of Ibiza not to mention pasbronchial and plenty of hash, coke, and ecstasy we still managed to have a pretty good time overall. Next time I went back I didn't make the same mistake.

Re: But Poohbear's Heroin A-OK

[HornWumpus]

Bullshit. The members of the communist party (the chinese elites) just don't get their hands personally dirty and hence virtually always skate. Just like the Bushes, Kennedys and Clintons in the USA.

Chinese 'anti-corruption' programs are just the leadership turning over and installing their own corrupt bureaucrats.

Re: But Poohbear's Heroin A-OK

[Luckyo]

This is projection of your values on people who hold dramatically different values.

It renders any conclusion you draw wrong, often to the worst kind of wrong. To the opposite of correct.

Re: But Poohbear's Heroin A-OK

[HornWumpus]

Bullshit. How is it that all the children of Chinese central committee members are 'owners' of multimillion dollar businesses?

Re: But Poohbear's Heroin A-OK

[Luckyo]

Because that's how Chinese system works. Literally, read what I described above. You're observing correct fact through a lens of a wrong culture, and coming to conclusions that are diametric opposite of what is actually going on.

Perhaps the best descriptor is the old Cold War adage. "In the West, he who has money has power. In the East, he who has power has money".

Re: But Poohbear's Heroin A-OK

[HornWumpus]

You start by saying they lack dynasties, now dynastic behavior is just how the Chinese system works...Make up your mind.

Power and money are always intertwined. Neither side is as you described, rather both are very much the same, under the bullshit.

There are clearly powerful chinese people that own the labs, they will never go down for the drugs that leak out the side doors into China. Those drugs aren't even illegal today.

Re: But Poohbear's Heroin A-OK

[Luckyo]

You keep stumbling on your blindness due to the lens you're using. "Ownership" has completely different meaning in China compared to US. You act as if "owning something" is even remotely similar in China to what it is in US. It is obviously not. In communist systems like Chinese, state doesn't guarantee private property. It merely temporarily cedes control over it to private citizens, and this is subject to state's whim to take back at any time. That is why in the adage I mention, "in the East, he who has power has money". Having power brings money, but having money not only doesn't bring power, but has a significant chance of costing you everything if you don't toe the party line.

Which is the exact opposite to the Western system, where state acts as an absolute guarantor of private property, to the point where state has to burden itself to the extreme to be able to confiscate anything from private citizen. Hence "in the West, he who has money, has power".

I'll reiterate my initial point one more time. In China, if you're a son of important party functionary, you get a chance to rule some small township somewhere. As according to adage I point out above, that comes with stewardship rights, which you confuse for something like ownership is in the Western system. But if you want to advance from that, you need to show merit. Your township needs to appear to thrive to your immediate superiors. If you fail to do it, that's it. No amount of daddy's intervention will save you. In fact, your father will suffer harshly for having incapable offspring, as that will cause him to lose face, which is why party functionaries take educating their offspring extremely seriously to the point of sending them across the world to get educated before allowing them to get on the track for political leadership.

Which is why proponents of the Chinese system can proudly and correctly state that they're the most technocratic system full of most intelligent and meritocratic people in the world. And their system is a great argument against technocracy and intelligence as the sole, or even primary merits to look for in entirety of leadership.

Re: But Poohbear's Heroin A-OK

[HornWumpus]

Having power brings money everywhere. Duh. The Clintons have never delivered any legal market value (as opposed to influence market), but they are multimillionaires. The last Kennedy to do anything useful was Joe Sr. (Joe Jr did too, but he died in WWII, Joe Sr was most recent.) But powerful, so rich as fuck.

It's not that different under the bullshit. There is no 'absolute guarantee of private property', you must have imagined that.

Money is power and power is money, everywhere. Don't kid yourself. Even in the west, to truly secure a dynasty worth of money, you have have to secure political power.

You can hear the 'that's a nice industry you've got there, sure would be shame if something happened to it' extortion in congressional hearings, once you know to listen for it. Funny how Microsoft started contributing millions to politicians of both parties, after it was extorted by the feds. Facebook is no doubt way ahead of MS.

As to you claim that Chinese 'power children' have to start with some town and earn more honestly, BULLSHIT! They are ALL taking all they can grab with both hands.

Re: But Poohbear's Heroin A-OK

[Luckyo]

>Having power brings money everywhere

This is literally false. Even a cursory observation of Western political system tells you that while power flows from money, money does not flow from power. It is evidenced by desperate fundraising drives of most incumbents who aren't wealthy from other sources. Power doesn't give them money. In fact, should they wield political power against interests of those with money, their careers end swiftly.

Which is the exact opposite of what happens in totalitarian communist states like China.

Regardless, I see that you're far too invested in your world view to be able to look at things objectively. I've said my piece. Take it for what you will.

Say Your Name

[Anonymous Coward]

Reek! You are back! Oh man, I am so glad. I thought you had learned your lesson. I should have known better. Stupid is as stupid does! Enjoy that -1 karma, its the prize for winning the inferiority contest.

Re: Say Your Name

[Anonymous Coward]

You really need to learn how to troll and insult. You suck at it! Just like you suck all those homeless, crack-head dicks on the street! Damn, you are one dick-sucking mother-fucker aren't you? I can't believe you can even talk with all that crack-head semen in your mouth. Please shut the fuck up, it's gross seeing you talk with all that jizz dripping out of your mouth!