some positive results
I wonder how much of the decline should be attributed to attempts to “disrupt the illegal drug trade” and how much to the slow process of word getting out to people who might otherwise have got themselves hooked on it that this stuff is dangerous.
Deaths are down in the US as well. One of the theories I heard posited was that the producers are cutting the purity of the drugs so their users last longer and are able to buy more product. 🤷♂️
It always has been on their best interest to not kill users, the toxicity of the supply has several reasons and a major one is aiming for high potency to make more money from each gram so that the business is viable even with logistic losses.
So just as there’s an incentive to make it less “pure” (by mixing with filler), there’s an incentive to make it more “pure” (reducing the prevalence of the strongest opioids), both reducing the potency. And the counter incentive is, ironically, crackdown. The more drug busts and logistics disruptions they have, the higher the incentive is to increase potency (and overdoses).
Just like diseases tend to mutate over time so that they’re less likely to kill the infected.
