Fentanyl & worse in the UK now
Addiction Economy Thought for Today - this was a shocker. The addiction economy of illegal drugs not much different to the rest and even scarier. Mary Wakefield, Kevin Dahlgren and Fraser Nelson at The Spectator doing some fantastic pieces on Fentanyl in the UK over the last year or so.
I didn't know that fentanyl is already in the UK and killing a growing number of people. We think we are immune because we are Britain, not America and it can't happen here, we have the NHS. But it is already here, and sometimes not where you would expect:
A bit of backstory: the illegal addiction economy companies realised that when we pulled out of Afghanistan, the Taliban would crack down on poppy farming (they've now destroyed 95% of the opium poppy crop), so they switched to something a bit easier, synthetic lab produced Fentanyl and even more potent variations like Nitazenes which are 20 times stronger than Fentanyl, mostly made in China.
In the UK, like the US, it was initially cut with the heroin, a simple way of getting customers to switch to their new product which gave a better high but was much much more addictive and dangerous. "Once you’re an opioid addict, you’ll do anything to ward off withdrawal. They just buy and die", says Mary Wakefield commissioning editor.
Now, in the UK, they are being found in amphetamines, in benzodiazepines like Xanax and Valium which look just like the real prescription blister packs with authentic-looking pharmaceutical labels. Also, Britain is the cocaine capital of Europe, which I didn't know, and coke is one of the easiest to cut with fentanyl, that is expected to be a growing new business opportunity in the UK.
What is also horrible, is the observation that even in the US they don't have enough sophisticated crime labs to test for fentanyl during an autopsy, and the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs recommended urgently investing in better equipment for autopsies. "So how many of those British deaths from drug-poisoning were even tested for fentanyl and its analogues?"
The three excellent UK focused articles here. I am not sure about the paywall, sorry.
https://lnkd.in/euh3cT6n
https://lnkd.in/eRUZndXm
https://lnkd.in/ehGqvDMH