President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed that China would crack down on the production and exporting of fentanyl and the precursor chemicals used to make it, according to media reports.
But while Biden is painting the agreement as a win that will “save lives”, drug policy experts told VICE News they’re skeptical the measure will curb the overdose crisis—and it may make the drug supply worse.
Biden and Xi met Wednesday in San Francisco, where both leaders were in town for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. According to the New York Times, China will go after the exporting of illicit fentanyl into the U.S. and the manufacturing of precursor chemicals, which are being used to make fentanyl and smuggle it into the country from Mexico.
Hear me out guys.
As a society, or the one we want at least, we’re supposed to care for each other.
I personally think they should ramp up the war on opiates. Mass terror on those who enable the illicit use of them. All it does is kill our communities and stifle the flourishing ones.
Weed was proof that the war on drugs was trash. We know that unlike opiates, smoking pot doesn’t completely reinvent your synapses into a drug seeking rat brain. So we all just collectively decided to throw the whole program away.
Evidently you can’t stop it from coming in through the borders but I feel like we should enable the seeking of domestic sellers. Just to put them in a nice square box, away from hurting others.
I would think we would learn from the first war on drugs. Support of addicts yes, try to police it away no. Counselors not cops.
I am sorry but there is no counseling for the crazies that have eroded their brain away with drugs. There is only prevention for future generations.
There’s no price you could pay me to rehabilitate the people that throw feces and yell at passerby’s. Too much risk.
A big reason addicts turn to street drugs is because of the healthcare systems “blacklist” for drug abusers. Fixing that would help the ones that became addicted because of pain relief false advertising, get the help they need.
But what do we do about the people that have reached the point of no return?
The conversation changes dramatically when you have seen the depravity inside a State of California Public Restroom.
The people who are that severely damaged by drugs* are a small percentage. I’ve only seen a handful who got that bad because of drugs (I’m a professional in the field). Most addicts can benefit from appropriate care and could become functional members of society again if they had proper support - which our system grossly lacks.
*Most cases of persistent psychosis aren’t drug-induced; most of those throwing feces have psychosis from some other cause, which can also be treated with varying levels of success. Drug-induced psychosis is most of the time transient, and subsides as the drug wears off.
so what the solution. lock em up. kill them?
No mate. We need to have places dedicated for the permanent care of these people. As in live-in psych wards. I’m tired of seeing streets covered in needles and homeless people shitting in broad daylight.
Some people consider this as locking them up. But what else? You want to fight over who gets the park bench spot with the rabid man?
I mean we used to have psychiatric facilities but due to abuses they just sorta got rid of them (well and the lower taxes god) instead of regulating them better.
We got rid of them in the name of small government.
It was the Neo-liberal takeover ushered in under Reagan (and has been every president since) that shuttered the doors.
A constant, soul sucking feature of Neo-liberal society is it’s refusal to invest or reinvest into itself, choosing to extract as much wealth out of the working class as possible as fast as possible - short of rioting.
Its a funny thing from this crowd, they say we should run the government like a business but they never say what KIND of business. A non-profit? A ma and pop?..silence.
Infrastructure, Education, Medicine all have a positive Return On Investment (ROI), which means that the smart business decision is to pay for it all, ensuring it’s thorough, properly done, and to best practices.
But that is not what neo-libs mean. They mean short term profit corporations where responsible parties go unpunished.
The literal worst system you can imagine.
There’s some great YouTube videos about a Mexican forced rehabilitation group that picks up people that are fucking up in life and humiliates them and forces them into rehab. 
Later on they seem to be liking sobriety and appreciative, so I don’t see what’s wrong with picking up a couple of junkies nodding out in public, giving them narcan to ruin their day, and then kick the living recovery into them, then force them to eat nothing but beans and rice for 3 months. Then keep them on a short leash.
It’s full of camaraderie and think that it’s a good starting point for those that couldn’t find purpose elsewhere.
A couple of junkies who are nodding out in public still have the same rights to freedom and self determination as anyone else. You’re just advocating for more of the same war on drugs, brutalising marginalised people. After so many years it should be obvious that shit does not work.
Did you watch the video? It’s an AA program that works. Yeah we used to have places to send them but as mentioned they were full of abuse. We need simple people treating other people. No ego tripping maniacs that want to test on patients. Therefore no psychiatrists. Just a drug abuse and misuse specialist.
I honestly don’t know about the determination part pops.
Their brain is determined for more dope that’s for sure, it’s not magic. They simply made their brain into a different structure by chronically abusing drugs. The blood brain barrier becomes shit because heroin rips through it, no more special chemicals like oxytocin or the feeling ones like endorphins. A husk of your former self.
This can be fixed but it’s a long and arduous process and may I remind you that we have reached epidemic levels of addiction and abuse. That’s a lot of people.
War on drugs is sending them to jail and not even fixing the problem. If you have a problem with talking mean to crackheads to get them to get into your van and into a treatment facility then I have a feeling we’re gonna be here for a long time.
Edit: And yeah, I honestly believe that the person who has no sympathy for his fellow citizens and outright sells them what will eventually end their life through addiction and bring pain to their family should just disappear and be put in some hole. Cause a big percent of the time they’re lying to customers and just putting fent in the bitch to purposefully get them hooked or make others hear about their potent product.
Idk humanity took a wrong turn, and everyone is on the defensive about it instead of wanting to fix it because it seems kinda shitty.
If the people I am talking about don’t care to not sleep next to their own feces pile, or walk around covered in piss, only have 2 teeth, use needles found on the sidewalk, why should we care about how we get them to comply?
Sorry for being a bit of a cunt. It’s easy being an armchair superhero. Hopefully I can learn from this as it’s a problem that I’m severely interested in fixing.
Good on you. The world needs more of this
Be proud of this. don’t lose this, don’t let the world beat it out of you.
Not quite the same but NPR interviewed a guy who used to basically live in this open air drug market in california and he got incarcerated and he said it saved his life by forcing him to go cold turkey.
4NEX0