A prosecutor in flyover country looks at opioids; fentanyl and meth cheaper than ever

If you've been awake for the last decade or so you've heard that heroin is making a comeback.  Worse, a new, far more powerful synthetic called fentanyl--somewhere between 30 and 100 times more potent than heroin--is making it easier for drug cartels to push their products.

The post below is adapted from an article by John Litle at the blog American Greatness.  John is a prosecutor in Muskingum County, Ohio, and his experiences are...educational.  The problem, it seems, is only tangentially drug use, and more about how bad, malicious people among the "elites" (media and entertainment) have convinced American youth that using illegal drugs is cool. 

The result is upwards of 50,000 needless deaths a year, and hundreds of billions of dollars in theft by addicts.  As always, good people end up paying the price for what the so-called elites have deemed cool.

Zanesville, Ohio, is a typical Midwestern community--86,000 good, hard-working people. Yet everyone in town knows someone who's been damaged by illegal drug use.

Astonishingly, no one here cooks meth anymore.  They've been put out of business, not by law enforcement but by meth made on an industrial scale in Mexico. And heroin.  And its far more potent rival, fentanyl.

An "eight-ball" is 1/8th of an ounce of meth.  Four years ago an eight-ball in Zanesville cost $300 to $350.  Last month our department was able to purchase an eight-ball of meth for just $60.

At that price, a single hit of meth is cheaper than a cheap cup of coffee in Zanesville.

Local meth labs have been put out of business because street prices are so low that there's just no profit in making the stuff locally anymore.  Because the cartels buy ingredients by the ton, the total cost of the ingredients for small-scale cooking is now more than the street price of meth imported from Mexico.

The other new development is fentanyl and its derivatives.  Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, from 30 to 100 times more potent than heroin, and it's flowing into the U.S. in huge quantities.  Its far greater potency makes it more attractive to the cartels since smuggling a single kilo of fentanyl across the border is as profitable as smuggling thirty kilos of heroin.   

Because of its greater potency per milligram, drug dealers have started using fentanyl to simulate prescription narcotics like Percocet or Oxy--both of which have a higher street price, in part because users think they're the real thing, thus less risky. 

Narcan is the trade name for a drug called Naloxone, an antidote for an opiate overdose.  With overdoses now so common, many small towns have ordered their ambulance services to carry this expensive drug. 

To reduce overdose deaths our county made Narcan available over-the-counter.  We even give it away at no cost to opiod addicts.  Overdose deaths are down. But now addicts are having Narcan parties. I am not making this up. Everyone gets their narcan together and sees how close they can get to dying, knowing the narcan is there to save them.

EMS crews routinely have to use 10 or more doses of narcan to revive an addict from a single large overdose.  They also routinely have to revive the same addict more than once in the same 24 hour period.  How much should taxpayers spend to keep addicts alive?

A common sentiment is “narcan should be illegal,” or that it should be limited to a single use or application.  The expression reveals the deep frustration held by many about people who are determined to use opiates and methamphetamine regardless of risk, and have no interest whatsoever in reform, recovery, treatment, or rehabilitation.

Seems to me that in a free country, people should be able to ingest or inject whatever they wish.  But at the same time I don't believe non-users should keep spending their tax dollars to revive drug addicts who repeatedly, voluntarily overdose.