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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.
Maybe I'm an outlier (or I was taking an insufficient dose as described in Drug users use a lot of drugs), but Opioids weren't that great unless I was in pain.
My experience made me much more sympathetic to the idea that the "opioid epidemic" is an appropriate reaction to the chronic pain epidemic (particularly among blue collar workers with physically-demanding jobs. Who would've thought.)
I've heard from people in the medical industry that the effect of prescription opioids is roughly split in thirds - about a third get basically no effect at all or strictly bad effects, another third get effective pain relief but no desire to do more once the pain is gone, and the final third feel dangerous addictive desires in addition to pain relief and are prone to addiction and all the resulting issues if other factors in their life line up right/wrong.
Meanwhile, it seems really weird that there is suddenly a "chronic pain epidemic". Why should there be such a thing now? Humans have been doing lots of strenuous manual labor for all of recorded history - especially before the industrial revolution. Have we all suddenly got worse somehow? Is it maybe related to signs that the modern diet is mostly terrible?
This may roughly correspond to estimates that 27% of Chinese males were addicted to opium as aftermath of opium wars and wide availability of the drug. To be honest, I do not get the whole idea of how decriminalization of drugs will be so fantastic with these and other natural experiments during 19th century. There was a reason why newly discovered drugs got banned in the first place.
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