A worse pandemic also from China and open borders.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that can be deadly even in very small amounts, and other drugs, including heroin, meth and marijuana, can be laced with the dangerous drug. Mexico and China are the primary sources for the flow of fentanyl into the United States, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
https://www.foxnews.com/us/fentanyl-overdoses-leading-cause-death-adults?cmpid=fb_fnc
I spent 90 days at a recovery half-way house to help treat my excessive drinking problem. There were about 20 people there at any given time, all of them with various addictions: Alcoholism, opiate addictions, stimulant addictions, etc.
Having spent three months with many addicts who had a heroin problem, I know a bit about the opioid crisis from talking to them, so I’ll chime in with my input.
Heroin is an expensive drug: The street value for one gram is $70. Injecting a single gram of heroin over the course of a day will kill a first-time user, but for many hardcore addicts whose tolerance to the drug is high, one gram is enough to get them through a day feeling good.
$70 a day for a year is over $25,000, which is very expensive anyone, junkie or not. One of the heroin addicts who I befriended didn’t have a job, so I asked him how he was able to afford such an expensive habit. He said, “If someone puts a plastic bag over your head and you can’t breathe, what do you do? You find a way to get air by any means necessary. And it’s the same with money: If you desperately need money for dope, you get cash by any means necessary.” Here he was hinting that he did illegal things to feed his addiction but didn’t want to tell me directly. Later I found out from another person at the half-way house that he had been robbing gas stations and corner stores at gunpoint and spent time in jail for it.
Drug dealers who deal heroin can make a fortune selling dope to addicts. They import heroin cheaply from sources that sell it in bulk, and then they pocket the difference they sell on the street in profit. Many dealers drive luxury cars and live in big houses, at least until they get caught.
Despite having all sorts of money and being rich, these dealers want to get even richer because of their greed, and there is a horrible way to do it: They mix their drugs with various substances, many of them dangerous and lethal, to inflate their supply. For example, a lot of crystal meth is cut with bath salts, and most cocaine is cut with baby laxative.
With heroin the mixing is even worse: Dealers will cut it with fentanyl.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is extremely powerful. It’s also extremely cheap and easy to make in a lab. Thus, pretty much every heroin dealer will mix heroin with fentanyl to make more money selling drugs.
Because fentanyl is so powerful, it’s also extremely lethal even in small doses. So if an addict buys a gram of heroin from a dealer and too much fentanyl is mixed in with it,
he will die.
This sums up why so many people are dying from opioid overdoses: It’s basically because greedy dealers cut their dope with cheap fentanyl, so thousands of people hooked on opiates get a bad batch and die.
What’s the solution to this problem? In my opinion, anyone caught dealing drugs—whether it’s heroin, meth, cocaine, or what have you—should get a mandatory life sentence in prison. Society must remain vigilant if something is to be done to put a permanent end to the opioid crisis. It’s really the only way to get this horrible stuff off the streets.
