President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed that China would crack down on the production and exporting of fentanyl and the precursor chemicals used to make it, according to media reports.

But while Biden is painting the agreement as a win that will “save lives”, drug policy experts told VICE News they’re skeptical the measure will curb the overdose crisis—and it may make the drug supply worse.

Biden and Xi met Wednesday in San Francisco, where both leaders were in town for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. According to the New York Times, China will go after the exporting of illicit fentanyl into the U.S. and the manufacturing of precursor chemicals, which are being used to make fentanyl and smuggle it into the country from Mexico.

    • TrippyFocus@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I mean clearly there’s systemic issues driving people to seek this stuff, just removing fenty without addressing those means they’ll just seek out other things. Realistically we should be legalizing the safer stuff (psychedelics, MDMA, etc) that isn’t as damaging or addicting and raising living standards to combat the harder stuff but in our current state where weed isn’t even legal federally and it’s all treated the same more or less addicts and ODs on hard drugs are going to be the outcome.

      • SoylentBlake@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I agree with what yr saying but it all makes me think you’ve never tried, whether on purpose or not, fentanyl.

        Fent…makes you absolutely retarded when yr on it, but when you are, you are transported to the warm busom of God til you snap out of it. You don’t care about anything, hunger, cold, any trauma, any worries, any stressors. It all melts away for that short amount of time.

        Besides the physical addiction sending a need as strong as thirst in the desert, that reprieve from pain is addicting all it’s own. A good majority of people actively using and seeking out fent assume they’ll die from it, and they’re fine with that.

        I’ve never been on the ban drugs train, I think the subjective exploration of consciousness and meta-reality are incredibly important for people, be that in personal mental health and growth, artistically and spiritually. At the same time, I think letting Shamans control the flow isn’t a terrible idea, but if implemented should also come with an end date after society comes to terms with itself. I think terminal patients should be given as much DMT as they want for as long as they want it, it’s like making practice runs at the other side. I think ibogaine should be widely available for resetting addictions back to null, but that should prob be a guided trip, same thing with ayehuasca.

        But fent shouldn’t be allowed outside a medical setting. The opioid receptor is devil in a red dress; dance with the devil, devil don’t change, devil changes you.

        In a kinder society we would prescribe meds that turn off pain receptors, like the ones developed from jellyfish and other neurotoxins, but that would prob be stipulated with forced, active restraint bed rest. We don’t use those now because pain let’s us know when we push too far, otherwise we’d just keep reinjuring ourselves. But fent gives that absence of pain too, and coupled with the i-cant-stress-how-extreme-cravings people will look at the work necessary to holistically end their pains and just say, nah man. At the cost of everything. Parents abandoning children. Cuz once their high, they don’t care. So they just plan to stay forever high.

        I’m all for banning fent.

        It’s the embodiment of my second favorite malaphor “build a man a fire and he’s warm for a night, but set a man on fire and he’s warm for the rest of his life”

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Fent…makes you absolutely retarded when yr on it, but when you are, you are transported to the warm busom of God til you snap out of it. You don’t care about anything, hunger, cold, any trauma, any worries, any stressors. It all melts away for that short amount of time.

          That may be true recreationally, but I had it in the ER when I had a kidney stone and all it did was take away the pain and make me drowsy.

          • HubertManne@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Yeah both my wife and I don’t get much effect from opiates when we are prescribed them and don’t get how folks can become addicted to them. I think different folks just react differently. I guess we are lucky to have the meh effect from them.

              • SoylentBlake@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                I wonder if it’s the higher percentage of Neanderthal DNA.

                Smokers also require more pain meds, not just the opiates but the -caines as well.

                I have strawberry blonde hair and smoke. Any pain meds and me is like, ‘turn it all the way up Dentist’ or ‘yea, Vicodin does nothing. That bottle is like 2 doses.’

                I landed me a debilitating repetitive injury from work, and besides taking a lateral move, I needed pain meds just to function. The pain would spread from my shoulder/back/arm up my neck into my brain. I’m talking rapid onset migraines where I’d go blind.

                First time, I was driving.

                Not fun.

                I didn’t know that could even happen. Regardless, I needed help to work, then without them Id withdraw and be unable to work. Right down the slippery slope I went. Got to a point where I just said no more, idc what happens, took 10days off work, sat at home with 30 boxes of donuts, various one step meals, 20 gallons of choc milk and otter pops. Told myself, and everyone else, i was sick. I refused to make any decisions besides what to eat that was in the building for the entire time as I considered my mind compromised and sus.

                I am exceptionally willful tho and can compartmentalize like it’s the ADHD Olympics. Results will vary. I do not recommended the experience. 0/10. Dengue fever in a foreign land where I speak 0.5% of the language was more pleasant.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I was glad it took away the pain, but yeah, they don’t do anything for me that would get me addicted to them. The constipation is the worst part.

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            1 year ago

            The difference is need. Itll work the pain first, what’s leftover will work towards the high

            Good health/no pain= to the moon 🚀

            Also, I’m happy it helped you. It can be fantastic in a clinical setting.

        • otp@sh.itjust.works
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          Thanks for writing this up. This is the kind of comment I used to be on the lookout for on Reddit, so this is making Lemmy feel like it’s going to be able to fill that old niche for me.

          Excellent way with words!

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          Sorry if I wasn’t clear, I 100% get trying to reduce fentanyl my response was more a complaint that we seem to always do these half measures but yes trying to get fentanyl gone is a good thing. I’ve done many drugs but thankfully never fent.

    • flooppoolf@lemmy.world
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      They have shittier, cheaper drugs to pump tbh. Various vice documentaries show how redacted ass dealers mix in whatever they can get their hands on. The way third world countries do their drugs might come to the US, and I don’t think anyone has yet to realize how cushy the drug scene really is up here.

      Recent documentary covers a drug called Tusi, which is meant to sound like 2C, as in 2C-B. It is everything except 2C-B. A mixture of fentanyl meth ketamine and whatever they feel like on that day. People absolutely love it. Do they care about what’s really in it? No.

      If you want to end your life and turn it into abhorrent trash, what is stopping you from walking downtown and finding a cool cat in the alley selling horse?

      Personally think the war on drugs is fucked, when you’re talking about stoner Doug. No one deserves the butt of a rifle for pot. But hey, I don’t think anyone minds when the local fent dealer disappears.

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        1 year ago

        Hear me out guys.

        As a society, or the one we want at least, we’re supposed to care for each other.

        I personally think they should ramp up the war on opiates. Mass terror on those who enable the illicit use of them. All it does is kill our communities and stifle the flourishing ones.

        Weed was proof that the war on drugs was trash. We know that unlike opiates, smoking pot doesn’t completely reinvent your synapses into a drug seeking rat brain. So we all just collectively decided to throw the whole program away.

        Evidently you can’t stop it from coming in through the borders but I feel like we should enable the seeking of domestic sellers. Just to put them in a nice square box, away from hurting others.

        • HubertManne@kbin.social
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          I would think we would learn from the first war on drugs. Support of addicts yes, try to police it away no. Counselors not cops.

          • flooppoolf@lemmy.world
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            I am sorry but there is no counseling for the crazies that have eroded their brain away with drugs. There is only prevention for future generations.

            There’s no price you could pay me to rehabilitate the people that throw feces and yell at passerby’s. Too much risk.

            • flooppoolf@lemmy.world
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              A big reason addicts turn to street drugs is because of the healthcare systems “blacklist” for drug abusers. Fixing that would help the ones that became addicted because of pain relief false advertising, get the help they need.

              But what do we do about the people that have reached the point of no return?

              The conversation changes dramatically when you have seen the depravity inside a State of California Public Restroom.

              • flooppoolf@lemmy.world
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                No mate. We need to have places dedicated for the permanent care of these people. As in live-in psych wards. I’m tired of seeing streets covered in needles and homeless people shitting in broad daylight.

                Some people consider this as locking them up. But what else? You want to fight over who gets the park bench spot with the rabid man?

                • HubertManne@kbin.social
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                  I mean we used to have psychiatric facilities but due to abuses they just sorta got rid of them (well and the lower taxes god) instead of regulating them better.

              • flooppoolf@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                There’s some great YouTube videos about a Mexican forced rehabilitation group that picks up people that are fucking up in life and humiliates them and forces them into rehab. 

                Later on they seem to be liking sobriety and appreciative, so I don’t see what’s wrong with picking up a couple of junkies nodding out in public, giving them narcan to ruin their day, and then kick the living recovery into them, then force them to eat nothing but beans and rice for 3 months. Then keep them on a short leash.

                It’s full of camaraderie and think that it’s a good starting point for those that couldn’t find purpose elsewhere.