The overdoses per abuser from regulated, labeled opiates is on the order of at least 100x lower than illicit opioids. The consistent formulation is hugely safer than street drugs with inconsistent dose.
Sure. But I am responding to you, not that guy upthread.
Your implied claim, as I read it, is that "opioid-ness" is "why fentanyl kills," and there's nothing special going on because we had a bunch of deaths from licit opioids in the early 2000s. But I think that there's actually something special about illicit fentanyl in particular, as opposed to regulated opioids, and dose inconsistency is one plausible difference.
Anyway, you could just share what your thoughts are more explicitly, and that would be interesting and maybe harder to misunderstand.
I was responding to a particular argument. I've lost track of what we would be arguing about here. My point was pretty straightforward: high-test opiates don't simply kill because they're unregulated; they do a very good job of killing simply by being widely available at all.
They are not at all meaningfully controlled. There are drive-thru markets for this stuff with people doing traffic control in Chicago, and presumably in every other major market.
I don't believe it much matters. The death stats on oxycodone are staggering. I'm sure the street drugs are much more dangerous dose-for-dose, but given free access to oxycodone, you're just as likely to die, perhaps on a marginally longer schedule (there are survivor high-functioning maintenance addicts on both natural and synthetic/street opioids, obviously). Remember as well that a great many street fentanyl deaths were pts started on regulated, labeled opioids who spun off into addiction; they transitioned to fentanyl because it was easier to get, not because it was stronger.
Remember as well that a great many street fentanyl deaths were pts started on regulated, labeled opioids
Primis, this is an unbacked claim. Secundo, why didn't they die from prescription opiods?
The truth is fentanyl has a low safety index which makes the dose more important.
"The calculated safety index (ORantinociception/ORrespiratory depression) for fentanyl of 1.20 suggests that fentanyl has a low safety margin, implicating that fentanyl needs to be titrated with caution."
Now you're way off the map. The originem claim was that controlled fentanyl dose would decrease overdoses. It wasn't about oxycodone being 'safe' (even though I gave you stats that showed 80% of deaths of from combining drugs), it wasn't about oxycodone vs heroin. Not to mention that way more people take oxycodone than heroin, so even from a stats 101 angle this doesn't make sense. Really, what is the point of a reply like this?
I don't think I am. The subtext of the original comment was that making opiates more widely available but more carefully regulated as to content and dosage would save lives. It pretty clearly would not do that. The high order bit of this problem is the number of people that start habitually using opiates; I think basically nothing else matters.
Clear according to what? You gave no statistics and made nothing but unbacked claims. Most of what you did say is directly contradicted by the CDC.
Fentanyl is extremely potent and has a very narrow window between therapeutic dose and an overdose that kills you. Other opiate cause deaths overwhelmingly only when combined with other drugs.
Everything you have said about increased use or more deaths is an assumption not based on data. Why won't you source your claims?
