It is worthwhile to take note of the technological, social, and commercial revolution taking place in illegal drugs. In the olden day when opium first became avaliable, you need a pieice of land to plant the crop that can be used to produce opium.You need to own the land, to protect (i.e., paying for protection) your crops, and to process your crop yields, and to distribute your products over the world. All these require money and result in all kinds of corruptions in government and sometimes war among countries. - a very expansive proporsition for all concerned. Consider the parallel - alcohol. People can similarly become addicted to alcohol and drink themselves to family tragedy and death. The US even practiced PROHIBITION for a while. But that simply led to more social ills. Finally, alcohol becam legal. and we simply depend on people's own good sense to limit its use. Sure, a small percentage of people still die and cause tragedy when they use it irresponsibly . But now we accept this as unavoidable and as necessary evil. Yes, we have laws restricting the use of alcohol and punish the abusers. But the product is no longer illegal and we consider the societal problem solved. However, nowadays, the illegal feel good drug, FENTANYL, is a totally chemical drug. It does not need land to plant, guards to protect any plant, bribes to pay and to transport. A single family or a couple of persons can procuce the drug in their own kitchen sink. They are easy to hide and diffuclt to detect when transporting the drug through legal port of entry (say from Mexico to the US).
ACCIDENTAL OVERDOSE is way up becuase of uneven standard of production and no oversight. Now there is even talk to permit it legally and regulate it similar to alcohol. It is indeed a revolution. Only time will tell how we can resolve this new drug problem..
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