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This will probably get some play and is a bit of a different topic. Former CEO of YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicicki son died of a drug freshman year of college at Cal.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/former-youtube-ceos-son-found-dead-uc-berkeley-rcna139355
The obvious implications is he took something laced with fentanyl. Culture war wise concerns about fentanyl are red coded though issues with fentanyl seem apparent in both red and blue states and people.
Overall I feel like this issue has lost its place in the news cycle. A quick google overdose deaths topped 112k in 2023 an all-time record. I am seeing a current U.S. population of 334 million. So to put this in perspective 112k multiplied by an average lifespan of 80 years is like 9 million deaths. Or close to 3% of US population at current rates will die by a drug overdose. I think I can fairly say it’s a huge issue even if you disagree with how I’m calculating the average persons risks of OD at around 3% in their lifetime.
Quick analysis of the kid he looks in shape for a 19 year old and was majoring in math so he’s the dream of any parent. Odd thing is he was found unresponsive at 4:23 pm on a Tuesday. That is going to be weird and details will come out as that time frame is more of an addict death. Versus I expected a weekend OD and he did some fentanyl laced coke/Molly during the weekend.
From people I’ve talked to opioids are amazing. I do not know if I’ve ever done them. They have to be if people do them. I’ve done molly/coke/mushrooms in the past. The big thing to me is I’m paranoid I’m doing something laced now and have largely cut out doing anything now.
The midtwit take is that dealers either sell both and cross contaminate or lace other drugs to get people addicted. Personally opinion and perhaps a difference without a difference is it’s probably lacing just so people say it’s the good shit.
Sorry for their loss.
Culture war issues
Plays into the immigration debate of not controlling the border
Blue states seem to be adopting a let it happen and treat but it doesn’t seem to be working
War on drug topics. I don’t think the old war on drugs ever dealt with the death rate we have now but war on drugs doesn’t seem stupid when it’s a 3% population level lifetime death rate which is far higher than COVID and killing people with high life expectancy
Other policy considerations. Some would say things like legalize drugs to kill fentanyl and people get “safe” drugs. Some conservative arguments that something’s should just be illegal. Opioids probably are fantastic but the death rate for someone who tries opioids seems extremely high.
My numeracy tells me this is a big problem and I believe an order of magnitude bigger problem than COVID. I don’t think it’s quite as hard coded in culture wars.
She got what she voted for. In fact, she got what she weaponized her platform to convince everyone to vote for.
I know, I know, she's a Party member in good standing, and these policies were only supposed to sacrifice the proles in the name of progress. She was voting for this to happen to you, not her sweet prince and future Party apparatchik.
This won't change anything. At most it will be taken as a test of faith. That she sacrificed her son for The Party, and progress. At worst it will be directly blamed on red tribe... somehow. Some MAGA extremist got to him. Not unlike how Paul Pelosi's attacker, a drug addled insane criminal in a city where drug addled insane criminals are given completely free reign to do as they please, was smeared as somehow being a product of MAGA America and not SF's abysmal policing and keeping of public order.
Taking glee in the misfortune of others is a bad thing. We should aim to rise above such petty and base pleasures and be sad about the suffering she must now be going through, regardless of her actions and beliefs in the past. At least he was probably in complete bliss when he passed out and so did not suffer. But still it is a sad case of life being severed short and a reminder that one day we too will pass from this world.
I don't say this as someone who is even against people dying from an overdose. It's probably one of the nicest ways to go out too. I can make a strong argument that on net drug overdoses are positive for humanity as a whole (not in this case obviously but when you average out over the kinds of people who overdose the calculus changes significantly). However that does not mean that each and every such death is not a minor tragedy on its own, and we should be sad about this and recognise what the surviving family of the person who just died is having to go through.
In fact in this case the suffering is probably even worse than normal. Consider the fact that Susan Wojcicicki and her partner are probably more empathetically developed than the average person who just lost a family member and you'll realise the suffering they must be going through right now is an experience far worse than that suffered by most people in their situation. I sincerely hope they are able to find peace and wish them the best in this troubled time.
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This post has gotten a bunch of reports, and while Susan Wojcicicki is a public figure and we usually relax the rules about being unnecessarily antagonistic to public figures, it seems to me that if you want to dance on someone's grave (in this case, a dumb rich college kid who ODed) you should justify it with a better reason than "She's one of my tribal enemies so Ha! Ha! (insert Simpsons gif)." The OP was about fentanyl and drug policy in general: your response is just culture warring.
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What is the program of Republicans to ensure higher quality cocaine that isn’t laced with fentanyl for rich young Americans?
Strict drug laws and closing the border. The latter won’t do anything about this issue but the former can at least plausibly reduce the tendency of rich young people to do drugs.
My inclination is that if anything, strict drug laws make events like this more likely, because even very rich people end up getting drugs from underground sources. who knows where this batch of fentanyl originated? Where if drugs were legal, this kid would probably have gotten top-brand shit.
In Japan, drugs are illegal and almost nobody does drugs. The secret, oddly enough, is getting rid of the underground sources because they’re illegal.
The whole ‘if it’s illegal people will do it without supervision’ business is half people who think it’s fine and probably do it themselves, and half people whose moral codes proscribe actual enforcement of the laws
Unless the secret is, you know, being Japan.
The numbers I’m seeing here are all over the place, but the largest seizures were like 2,000 kg/yr. Meanwhile the US border seizes 82,000 kg/yr of meth alone. This can’t just be lack of enforcement.
Because in Japan nobody is stupid enough to try it, and if they do they don’t have the layers of procedural and legal protection they would in America. Japan has something like a 90% conviction rate.
Obviously there are other factors, most notably land borders, but I think the vast majority of the discrepancy comes from severity of enforcement.
With all these other factors, why do you think severity of enforcement makes the difference?
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I don't feel too strongly about this, obviously there's a whole bunch of factors involved here, but it's not like enforcement cannot result in a dramatic decrease in crimes that need enforcing against (see El Salvador) or lack of enforcement resulting in an increase (see post-BLM murder rate).
It’s definitely possible. Which is why I find it a bit premature to say the secret is getting rid of underground sources.
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Weirdly I would say rich young people want cocaine to be expensive. If you could buy coke at 7-eleven for the price of a Red Bull it wouldn’t be a status symbol having the coke in the club/after-party but a lower class stimulant.
Anything can be a status symbol if it comes in an expensive, fancy bottle.
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"How expensive drugs are" has little to do with how likely the children of billionaires are to experiment. "How likely you are to be arrested and prosecuted for simple possession" has a lot to do with it; we like to think of 18-20somethings as thinking they're invincible, and they certainly have a high tolerance for risk, but upper class kids are actually keenly conscious of living in a zero sum competition to stay at the top of the ladder. I'll bet this kid would never dream of getting a hooker because of the legal risk(which seems like it's probably not that high), despite being young and male and probably wanting some casual sex, because he knew getting prosecuted for solicitation would leave him with a permanent record. Putting drugs in that basket is at least theoretically a thing that strict drug laws can do.
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Rich young people still smoke weed though, and that’s cheap now.
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