> Something like this happened in neuromancer.

Right, and Case bought betaphenethylamine instead of speed which was way harsher. That's exactly what is going to happen, some more potent drug that escapes the vaccine is going to get more popular. It's a bandaid solution that ignores the root cause (drug prohibition)

Wait, what? Selling fentanyl as candy in every street corner shop is going to fix this?

There is a broad gulf between selling something like candy and criminalizing its possession. You need to be of-age to buy beer. Sudafed is sold OTC but with strict limits. You need a prescription to get many pharmaceuticals.

The reason for the strict limits on pseudoephedrine is because of its use in the manufacture of (prohibited) methamphetamine, so that's a poor example. Prescription drugs are also a bad example because fentanyl (and most other opioids) are already available with a prescription in most of the world.

Alcohol and nicotine are the only real middle ground in the US (maybe cannabis, but that's in a paradoxical legal status right now). Neither really seems to be in a "solved" state. Though I concede that at least alcohol and nicotine seem to be in a better state than fentanyl.

I really don't undertand this binary thinking regarding drugs. It seems like there's at least a third option in there somewhere between "ban it all and everything related and lock people up for decades if they touch the stuff" and "put it in a Pez dispenser and give every elementary school student a 12 tab slider with lunch every day."

We don't do that with alcohol or weed, I don't see why that's the first (and often only) option that comes to people's minds when suggesting some form of legalization.

Well, even as a legalization sympathetic person, I can _sorta_ see the argument when you look at how marijuana legislation has gone. Dispensaries all over the damn place and the endless variety of products and general "mainstreaming" of weed use... I'm not opposed in principle but as sympathetic as I am I can't help wondering if some of it has gone a little far.

That said though, I totally agree that "legalize all drugs" doesn't have to imply that we would do the same super fun dispensary thing that we do for weed for something like fentanyl, or even something more benign like mushrooms. I imagine legal fentanyl would be more like a freely available prescription or similar, where you can be dispensed a certain amount under reasonable conditions as opposed to just walking into the fentanyl dispensary and picking your favorite strain in a colorful container.

I wonder if there is a correlation between an accessibility of cannabis and alcohol-related incidents. Cannabis is much safer than alcohol. Would my friends and I have drank as much as we did when I was younger if cannabis was cheap and accessible?

Methadone is accessible for people dealing with opioid addiction, but that doesn’t provide a high so it doesn’t actually solve the problem of addicts choosing to continue opioid use.

Keeping fentanyl illegal evidentially can’t stop the problem of it ending up in street drugs causing overdoses. I concur a prescription for fentanyl patches would likely be the best approach.

Prescription of some kind, maybe in a similar but less permissive vein as medical marijuana, seems right to me too.

I'm pretty much in favor of letting people decide what goes into their bodies but I can't see a lot of benefits to freely available fentanyl. But I would definitely like to see an approach that decriminalizes addiction. It's a really tough nut to crack though. Not sure what the best approach is.

One of the purported benefits of legalization is that you eliminate some of the black market incentives for distribution. Prescriptions still leave room for a black market so I'm not sure they solve much... I'd be interested to hear arguments for any approach that could make the problem better.

> freely available fentanyl

I posted up-thread and want to clarify. Fentanyl and other strong synthetic opiates are mostly the product of heroin or opium being illegal. Decriminalized heroin would mean that opiate addicts would not have to resort to sketchy drugs to get high.

I don’t think it would. Fentanyl is on the streets because it is cheaper, stronger, and easier to smuggle than heroin is. Decriminalized heroin wouldn’t stop dealers from cutting their supply with fentanyl which is the main cause of opioid overdoses afaik. Regulated, controlled, and accessible fentanyl would mean addicts can safely get high.

I think the middle ground is, "medically supervised with informed consent" like we do with every other prescription medication. You wanna drop acid, take molly, pop an addy, or k-hole yourself, have a blast. Get a doctor to sign off that you know how it works, how to take it safely, what to do in an emergency or overdose situation, and that you don't have any complications with your health or other prescriptions.

It would at least be a safer and more honest policy about what the current state of recreational drug use is like in the US.

Yeah. Since alcohol became legal nobody has died from it.

You left off the /s ?

actually have a friend who nearly died from snorting fentanyl passed off as cocaine. fortunately an ambulance got there in time and saved him with narcan. his doctor friend also snorted coke with him, was carrying narcan in her purse and managed to Pulp Fiction herself on the way down.

fentanyl is scary stuff.

Opioid overdoses are typically due how opioids effect the brain, so this would prevent fentanyl from contributing to and overdose.

Opioid overdoses are typically due to overestimation of one's tolerance or underestimation of the strength of the drug being taken, and what you are responding to is a way that a weakened fentanyl effect could lead to that.

You could still OD, but it would not be a fentanyl OD, because the fentanyl in the drug would not be able to interact with the brain. If you took this vaccine, it seems like you would be just as likely to OD from heroin as you would from fentanyl+heroin.

Yeah that did cross my mind. I wonder if it really blocks it at the same level that you're talking about.

That is part of the goal of the vaccines, but I don't think there is enough trial data to know yet.

> * Something like this happened in neuromancer.

You just reminded me that I want to re-read it soon.