100k preventable deaths a year

Untrue..... When junkies don't have clean needles they are going to reuse needles.

As long as you can make absolutely certain they never run out of clean needles..... But that's not going to happen


A junkie is not going to wait for the treatment center to get another load of needles in next Wednesday before they hit up their dope

 

So yep, clean needles prevent the spread of disease.

 

As fentanyl overdoses and deaths have been on the rise across America, investigators have been setting their sights internationally to stop the flow.

Police and other experts say fentanyl and fentanyl-laced pills have been illegally imported from as far out as China and even smuggled through the U.S.-Mexico border.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/fentanyl-trip-drug-coming-america/story?id=84403096

The OP is full of it

 

If you can magically make sure every intravenous drug user always has access.

 

I try to live the world as it exists rather than as we would like it to be. Such drugs are illegal. The mindset is such in the US that it will not change. Therefore to reduce deaths, you try to cut off the supply of the illegal drugs.

 

So for you its all or nothing. Got it.

 

Are you saying there are no agents at the ports of entry? When did that happen?

 

The overall indications from news stories say the smugglers are the cartels, and they use illegal immigrants as mules, and have no problem finding ones to do it. They are already violating our laws anyway, Regardless, illegal immigration is a lot like a person entering your house through a window at night, without your knowledge.... and expecting you will invite them to stay for dinner.

Legalizing drugs that disable people and cause addiction hardly seems like a rational choice, but the fact is that making those drugs illegal hasn't solved the problem either.
There is a way to take down the cartels in short order, and deal with the base problem.

The cartels are not in the drug business because they like drugs, but because those drugs bring them huge profits. Their power, and their vulnerability- is in those profits.

So lets say that the government establishes a program that provides drugs to addicts- at the cost of production.
To access that, the addict registers but with total protection of their identity.
It will be legal for a registered user to possess drugs from that source, illegal for any others. Still illegal to sell, this is personal use only.

What does that do?
1- Knocks the profit out of the illegal drug industry. That hits the source of a multitude of criminal acts that have risen to the level of wars.
I won't say the cartel people will become honest, but they will need to find a new business.
2- Removes the problem of contamination and unknown strength of illegal drugs, thus eliminating many accidental drug deaths and overdoses.
3- Removes or greatly reduces the level of crime related to addictions.
4- Allows the governing agency to know who the addicts are, and create directed programs to help them break the addictions. That could be required participation in some way.

This is not a complete plan, but a rough idea of how the problem might be approached. I question the viability of any program the government manages, but I don't think there would be an alternative. The public response (and objection from the side opposite the one proposing the idea is automatic) will be based on the government becoming the drug dealers, and demonizing that. Somebody always does, no matter what gets proposed. But it should be obvious that we are not being successful at controlling illegal drugs and all the damages they result in, all the lives lost. The first question of any approach should be- will it solve, or greatly reduce the problem?

So... How does that strike you?

 

with 25 yrs experience in the addiction field and the same sober from addiction, i can say there are heroin substitues now dilludid, morphine, demerol, percodan and more simply relax Rx guidelines and return to the pre 1970s era there will always be users make it safer and remove the gangs and cartels

 

Précis please

You are right - new methods have to be found
https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-008-20 Fentanyl Flow in the United States_0.pdf

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/21/1158300583/fentanyl-smuggling-border-mexico-overdose-drug-war

Read the rest - good points there

 

Not a bad idea(s).
We can never eliminate drug users, like prohibition could not stop alcohol drinkers.

The goal should be to take out the cartels profits.
Make those that do use, have safe drugs.
Have programs to try and get users off of drugs completely.

 

http://www.politicalforum.com/index...e-deaths-a-year.610660/page-6#post-1074225343

Something along these lines in the linked post above sound like a reasonable solution.

 

" the smugglers are the cartels, and they use illegal immigrants as mules, and have no problem finding ones to do it. They are already violating our laws anyway, ""

Switch positions much?

 

You've already been shown data that shows 95% of the drugs enter the country via water.
Other entry ways are air routes.
Other entry ways are smuggled through entry points.

Mules bring in next to nothing.
They do have problems finding mules. That's why its not used very much.

 

???
Why would you think that?
I'm not switching anything, just pointing out facts any rational person should recognize.

 

and that can not be done, demand is too high.... they cut off the supply of cocaine, and we got locally looked meth

what we do is treat it like alcohol, arrest people for public intox and such

that is the world that exists

 

You do what you can within the world which exists.

 

Follow the thread please ... not directed at you...
DA was preaching the drugs are coming in from anywhere but the southern border..... before........ you mention mules and DA did a 180%...
His special British link was from 2015 form 8 years ago

 

You data you showed was 2015... 8 years ago... .... so now the border is wide open so your 95% by water is BS... again a wall would allow the BP to reallocate some agents to better service positions at ports of entry...... You are not as witty as you think you are... the funny part of you special BBC link from 8 years ago..... fentanyl is not mentioned once...

 

I like how the government likes to claim that 85 or 90% or whatever it is they say....
Comes through official border checkpoints.

Logic tells you that if drugs come across open areas of the border and they don't get detected that the government would not know how much is coming across those open areas of the border.

It's not like people who successfully get drugs over the border stop to register them

 

They don't know how many "got aways" that "got away" with drugs.... how many Americans can a backpack filled with fentanyl kill?

 

Probably damn near everyone in Rhode Island

 

Depends on how many people are dumb enough to use illegal drugs <shrug>

 

It's less wide open than 8 yrs ago. Didn't trump and obama add to the wall.
Do you have data that shows how drugs enter the country has changed?
If it worked well 8 yrs ago, it still works well today.

You haven't thought your posts out very well.


...
MARTIN: So, first of all, just walk me through it. How do most illegal drugs enter the U.S.?

KERLIKOWSKE: So the drugs that are actually taking the lives of people here in the United States - methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, fentanyl - almost universally come through the ports of entry along the southern border - so that is people that carry them on their bodies or even in their bodies or cars or vehicles. And then the second way is through the international postal mail service.

MARTIN: And when you say most, what do you mean? Like, 50 percent, 60 percent, 90 percent?

KERLIKOWSKE: Oh, well over 90 percent. People don't backpack or try to sneak those drugs across the border between the ports of entry because, one, they could be caught by the Border Patrol. Number two, they don't really trust those people to do that. So it's much better for them to have somebody that is taking the drugs through a port of entry where they're met on the other side of the port here in the United States, and those drugs are immediately taken.
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/06/710712195/how-do-illegal-drugs-cross-the-u-s-mexico-border

 

Our border is not less open at all.. you are wrong.
4 years… you are getting closer.
How about you come up with US government data of say…. 2022 or 2023 instead or British from 2015….