Fentanyl fueled unprecedented carnage with 112,000 fatal overdoses. The nation is increasingly divided over how to respond.

When the history of the fentanyl crisis is written, 2023 may be remembered as the year Americans woke up to an unprecedented threat scouring communities - and a deepening cultural divide over what to do about it.

For the first time in U.S. history, fatal overdoses peaked above 112,000 deaths, with young people and people of color among the hardest hit.

Drug policy experts, and people living with addiction, say the magnitude of this calamity now eclipses every previous drug epidemic, from the 1980s to the prescription opioid crisis of the 2000s.

“We’ve had an entire community swept away,” said Louise Vincent, a harm reduction activist in North Carolina, who says she still sometimes uses street opioids including fentanyl.

  • queermunist she/her
    1522·
    10 months ago

    I’m convinced this is actually a suicide epidemic, not just an overdose epidemic.

    The best advertising a dealer can get is to have someone die from their batch.

      • queermunist she/her
        94·
        10 months ago

        I was paraphrasing a Vice article.

        … though now that you mention it, it’s not sourced in Vice either. Just: “All of my heroin friends wanted to try the stuff that had killed the guy in M’s bed.” So take that with a grain of salt I guess.

        • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
          6·
          10 months ago

          It doesn’t sound to me like a real claim. I don’t think anyone is keeping stats on drug dealer advertising, nor would validating it change the point in any way. It just serves to illustrate how some are / may be profiting off of a deadly product.

        • MsPenguinette@lemmy.world
          3·
          10 months ago

          FWIW, I can attest to hearing this claim tho I can’t cite specific sources. I’ve seen several documentaries on YouTube with several users claiming this. If someone dies, it means the stuff is strong

          • butterflyattack@lemmy.world
            2·
            10 months ago

            When I had a habit this was often the case. If someone overdosed on a batch people tended to assume it was good stuff. Not necessary for anyone to die and even before narcan most overdoses were survivable. You’ve got to appreciate that unless you have a fairly reliable source, heroin can run the spectrum from pretty decent to completely useless. It’s not a happy feeling when you profoundly need a hit and you’ve spent your last money on stuff that doesn’t work at all. After this has happened a few times you’ll jump at the word of someone having strong stuff.

    • ULS
      9·
      10 months ago

      I just made a suicidal post before I read this. Maybe people are sick of living… Life kinda sucks for a lot of people.

    • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
      5·
      10 months ago

      I suspect it comes down to this: we think of suicide as a deliberate act by which a person kills themself. But, what about people who are aware they are playing a dangerous game but no longer care enough (or no longer have the wherewithal to even make an attempt)? At the end of the day, they themselves put the drug into their body. Strictly speaking, they did kill themselves, just in the same way that someone popping a bunch of pills in the medicine cabinet may be trying to do.

      Where it gets dicey is if we consider the person in question to be completely “out of control”, at which point it’s common to anthropomorphize the drug and turn it into a kind of killer. But again – drugs must be acted upon to kill.

    • j4k3@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      10 months ago

      It is the way I would choose to go. Had a neighbor use it to check out during (just after) sex. I feel for their partner, but I have to tip my hat to that final curtain call.