@General Lighting 986498 wrote:
I think what is happening in USA is the opiate users are taking a large variety of diverted pharms.
Many believe that because these are in “medicine” type packaging rather than bags of white/brown powder these are safer – but there are lots of different designs of pills with varying strengths. As well as these there are fake pills that contain fentanyl, which is extremely strong creating an environment where gross overdoses are invevitable.
The lack of joined up health and welfare services (even compared to UK and ours are far from the best in Europe) and healthcare being more privatised leads to doctors over prescribing even when not intended maliciously simply to keep patients in work and/or able to pay their medicare premiums/treatment bills.
The ones I am reading about (I am being sent these articles via Christian/Catholic websites which would not be classed as “socially liberal” but at the same time as surprisingly non judgmental by the standards of American media) are not about “street junkies” but working class people who are still driving, raising families, doing manual work etc.
In other countries a society where people were being overworked to such extent they needed strong opiates to mask the symptoms of what often starts as legitimate pain conditions yet were not admitted to long term treatment centres (which is what happens more often in Europe) would be seen as highly dysfunctional.
At work fentanyl is very rarely used (as with patients who are seniors there is a very low margin of error) and there are warnings in every treatment room about it. I don’t think it is ever given to younger, mobile patients for self-administration here (or anywhere in Europe) as that is just asking for trouble.
Over prescription of Oxycontin has been the worst and is essentially the cause of most of the people jumping from pills to heroin, because they said it was 2 a day when you need 3 or 4 a day, so that was a recipe for disaster. Fentanyl is mostly only made in patches or lollipops in the pharmaceutical market so it is harder to abuse. Problem is they cut down on opiate prescriptions and dope is dirt cheap right now so kids can jump into it who never really abused pills and pillheads who are finding them harder to come by also are either abusing both or have made the switch.
As far as the fake pills, it is pretty easy to get a relatively quality pill press for a reasonable price and then counterfeit whatever you want; the pills don’t look 100% like they’re supposed to, but they’re close enough that people don’t really question it unless they’re taught to. If you have a ‘real’ pill and a counterfeit pill side by side its pretty easy to see which is which. Some pharmaceutical pills have designs that are laughably easy to counterfeit, others are much more difficult. Also the generics are easier to counterfeit as well.
Someone near me was counterfeiting Xanax and got caught, but at least he was actually making fake Xanax pills by making alprazolam powder from legal precursors and then pressing the pills to look close to Xanax… He was a pharmacy student seeking an advanced degree if that tells you the knowledge typically required to pull off that kind of thing.. As far as counterfeiting pills and using a different substance, that is the lowest of the low, if you think you’re getting 5mg of Vicodin and you’re getting Fentanyl instead, well thats just fucked and very dangerous.
Edit: with the proper equipment, like a really quality press you can make great counterfeit pills, but you’d have to be operating on a huge scale to make the sunk cost of a pill press worth it.
