A good post on opiates

From the SSC subredit, here is a good point about opiates

In particular illicitly manufactured fentanyl. (The simple story is that fentanyl has revolutionized trans-national drug supply chains. It’s just much easier to smuggle a suitcase of cartefentanyl than a shipping container of heroin. The drug war’s incentive is to dilute the product as close to the end of the supply chain as possible, to minimize the bulk required for trafficking. The problem is that drug dealer trap houses are not equivalent pharmaceutical grade labs. Any error when homogenizing with the bulking agent, means some poor bastard dies if he gets the baggie with clump of unbroken fentanyl.)

and

All of this is a dog and pony show to distract from the fact that fentanyl has fundamentally eliminated any hope of drug enforcement working. The quantities are just too small to stop from being trafficked. The reality is that the only hope we have to control the death toll is to legalize and regulate heroin. But the more the drug warriors can distract people into poking their noses into physician’s prescription pads, the longer they can delay the inevitable change in policy that has to occur.