Good to hear Amsterdam has cleaned itself up. Hopefully San Francisco, Portland and Seattle will all follow suit and clean themselves up. They all currently look a 'Walking Dead' film locations, but with lots more public feces and needles everywhere. Such a shame because each is a beautiful city in its own right, at least they used to be.

Right… given the trauma, mental illness, and poverty that underlies drug addiction, I thought the language of “fentanyl enthusiasts” was a pretty insensitive way of describing a vulnerable and marginalized population…

ommani Have you actually ever spoken with any of the homeless drug users? I have. I used their own language to describe the current situation they see around them, thus "heroin and fentanyl enthusiasts". Fentanyl from China has invaded everywhere and everything here in America, Canada and Mexico. They (Law enforcement, border patrol & Military) have seized enough Fentanyl at the borders in the past 18 months to kill every man woman and child in Canada, USA and Mexico multiple times over. This shit needs to be stopped.

I worked in the addiction field for 4.5 years and spoke to many people with opioid addictions. Referring to such individuals as “fentanyl enthusiasts” is both ridiculous and offensive.

In my attempt to be lenient, you're still flirting with sourcing talk...

Don't refer to an addict as an "enthusiast." Most addicts don't want to be addicts, so they're not enthused about anything of the sort... and consider that some individuals, who are part of this community and deserve respect, are or may be or have been in recovery.

One love

I currently work with the population you describe as having self-identified as "enthusiasts". That language is, to be charitable with you, very shortsighted. And your validating claim of having "talked to" folks to derive this term is questionable at the very least.

Also, OR in no way has followed the model of Amsterdam or other countries that have moved to address the addiction problem within their society. We botched it, as usual. The pendulum will likely swing the other way as a result.

Hmm that sounds like Zürich in the 80s/90s when i was a kid. Google "Platzspitz needle park" if you don't believe me.

If you'd like to learn about the current approach of Switzerland, which is the culmination of strategies developed during that time, check out this page of our federal government: https://www.bag.admin.ch/bag/en/home/strategie-und-politik/politische-auftraege-und-aktionsplaene/drogenpolitik/vier-saeulen-politik.html. I linked the english version.

In short, there's 4 pillars: Prevention, therapy, harm reduction, and repression.
- Prevention means giving kids and youths the information they need to be able to make informed decisions. Also adult drug users of course - things like telling them about NBOMe or fentanyl so they can try to steer clear of that shit.
When i was a kid, they tried to scare us out of doing drugs, by giving false information. Like, smoke one joint, you'll be addicted to that in a week, on heroin within a year, and dead soon after. This clearly didn't work. People like myself did try weed, see that it wasn't nearly as bad as they told us, and consequently lost trust in all of that information (and the police). I'm convinced this was a significant part of how our heroin epidemic came to be. If i hadn't had a neighbor who was IVing heroin for 2 decades before he died, i would've probably tried it myself at some point - that's what i did with almost everything else.
- Therapy comes in a number of forms. Obviously there's counseling for anyone who accepts it, trying to attack the actual causes of addictive behavior. Then there's substitution therapy, where addicts get methadone for example, keeping their withdrawal in check while not being pleasantly psychoactive, which they then slowly taper down over the course of years. There's also a heroin program, where users actually get clean heroin for a price that only covers production. I believe they have to take it then and there at the safe use site, where they also get clean needles and medical supervision (in case of OD and such).
- Harm reduction should be a familiar term. It's things like distributing clean paraphernalia, safe use sites, the aforementioned heroin program, free drug testing, ...
While all these programs have a cost that is paid by tax payers, and one can semi-reasonably feel like these people don't deserve to be funded by the public, just know that massive repression (the only approach before) cost more than that and was much less effective at keeping the streets clean. View it as a way to SAVE tax payer money, if you don't already think that society should support their weakest.
- Repression is what it sounds like. Continued police presence, preventing open scenes to take hold in public (again).

It's not like we don't have any drug problems anymore, or like we're doing everything right. But this approach really improved things a lot, both for addicts and for the general public. And surely also for the police.

I'm realy sorry to hear that. I always thought the northwestern corner of the US was a little more enlightened when it comes to these kind of problems. Or at least somewhat pragmatic.

We just have awful governing and horrible mismanagement of funds, and a politically divided population. The common narrative among proponents is that the current state of things-crime, homelessness etc, is somehow directly caused by the decrim measure, when in reality all of the things that made that happen were already in place, and the measure was meant to address those things.

Suffering is a political cause, and that cause is not to end it, but to hide it. My enlightened city just passed a measue to criminalize homelessness by sweeping camp sites, creating mass sites of at least 250 people each, threaten those who won't go with fines that will place them in a revolving door justice system and is hiring 500 cops to enforce the bullshit. Because you know homeless folks are the cause of all this, ans def not the victims.

They are also currently arresting and fining foragers en masse at the azzy sites on the coast in OR and WA....

Decriminalizing all drugs and then arresting and fining people for picking shrooms? This doesn't make sense...

Sure doesn’t. One can quite easily go over the weight limits with freshies, which is 12 grams. That’s just a few. Under that it’s violation, over it goes into misdemeanor territory.

Some of those counties get a lot of their revenue in fall.

12g? With fresh ovoids that can be less than one mushroom!

Also, in further election news, a majority of OR counties have opted out of measure 109, the facilitated psiocybin bill, with "safe haven" cities within some still allowing the services:
https://psychedelicalpha.com/data/oregon-psilocybin-tracker

A lot of those counties also want to become part of "Greater Idaho"...

I keep reading horror-story after horror-story about your PPB and their masters.
We are so, so broken.

Seems appropriate to share.

One love

You really gonna just drop we have a *vaccine* for fentanyl and not comment?
I've been yelling it from the roooftops. This will get political, but it always does, we have a *VACCINE* for superheroin that kills everyone. Let's get dirty and talk about this one. Bill this your invite!

Open Access:

Not only is there a fentanyl vaccine, but there's been one since before September 2018. "Interesting".

Haha, my bad, been a bit reserved lately. But hopefully it doesn't get political... I was simply sharing what I felt was relevant information.

However, if one searches "fentanyl vaccine ncbi," there are several articles such as this one, to reinforce DF0's observation.

One love

Intersting, I have never heard of this. There are implants that have been in use to combat opiod abuse for years, such as vivitrol, which people can get if and when they enter into a substance abuse program. A vaccine for fent is a great idea, but how does it get into the people who would benefit? Of course it would save lives.

Can someone tell me how it works ( too early in the morning to read throught the paper, thx)? How long does it remain effective? How often does one need boosters, and how and where is it accessed? Obviously this cannot be forced on anyone, they would have to enter treatment first. Could be a great tool to prevent deaths from relapse. Vivitrol has been effective for many people I know but that's a different thing.