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gumby 23 hours ago [-]
It’s CLV (customer lifetime value): the integral of the MRR. Something most companies mentioned on HN should understand though it feels like Apple is the only one that takes it seriously
(And with Apple’s new CEO, the early signs are that commitment is headed for the ash heap as well, but it seems the Mafia may have a longer horizon)
Smalltalker-80 23 hours ago [-]
The Mafia may also have shorter horizon:
- Fantanyl 'customers' have munch higher risk of sudden-death
and then stop being customers.
- Fentanyl is a much more debilitating drug than heroin and much cheaper.
So Fentanyl customers are less able to gather the money for the next fix, and don't need as much (less revenue).
bombcar 21 hours ago [-]
Also if the family has some addicted to “normal” drugs it’s acceptable; but if they get fentanyl from you and die the next mafia family reunion will be spicy.
throwawayffffas 20 hours ago [-]
Hence they have a shorter CLV.
sandworm101 22 hours ago [-]
More than simply being alive, they want customers who can stay employed and so continue to pay higher prices over a greater number of years. Cocaine and pot are horrible but their users can maintain a working life for years or decades, making them more profitable drugs in the long term.
weightedreply 21 hours ago [-]
> cocaine *and* pot
I don't think these very different drugs should be compared equivocally.
And while both drugs have the possibility of abuse; most issues stem from legality - not the chemical effects.
hybrasian 17 hours ago [-]
We should probably start saying "sugar and cocaine". Since sugar is heavily addictive it can be equivocated the same.
Maybe that will help some people see how ridiculous it is to generalise like that.
sandworm101 15 hours ago [-]
The slope of addictive drugs with negative side effects starts with alcohol, then comes nicotine, pot, cocaine, crack, fentinal .... and then all the really exotic modern stuff. It is a spectrum. Some argue that there are upsides, and there are certainly uses for all these drugs, but no sane doctor would say they have no downsides, that unrestrained use is ever a good thing.
kaikai 15 hours ago [-]
How are you determining this scale?
Alcohol has greater negative side effects than pot, and nicotine is more addictive than cocaine or pot. I’m not sure what you mean by “exotic modern stuff,” but if it includes hallucinogens (what people usually mean by modern/exotic drugs) then they’re not really addictive at all.
I ask because the scale reads more like a morality scale than anything based on actual negative effects, either in the individual or society.
sitkack 21 hours ago [-]
> Cocaine and pot are horrible
citation needed
WillAdams 21 hours ago [-]
>Cocaine is God's way of telling you you are making too much money.
---Robin Williams
>It made me feel like a new man. The problem was, the first thing the new man wanted was more cocaine.
---George Carlin
Cocaine (in crack form) was found to be the third most harmful recreational drug overall, after alcohol and heroin. It also caused the most direct harm to users out of all drugs. Cannabis, not so much, mid-table. Non-crack cocaine was somewhere between the two.
Note that this study is now over 15 years old.
ramblerman 18 hours ago [-]
lol. Whoosh
moralestapia 21 hours ago [-]
That's what CLV means, dude ... come on.
shevy-java 23 hours ago [-]
> Fantanyl 'customers' have munch higher risk of sudden-death and then stop being customers
The Mafia kills people directly. That's a sudden-death right there.
though this is controlled and planned, I assume. As opposed to random numbers of customers dropping dead whenever they feel like it.
polotics 21 hours ago [-]
"The Mafia" is... many different things.
From self-defense post-war southern-italian village organisations to pure-evil predatory psycho-clans, to anything in between.
> From self-defense post-war southern-italian village organisations
That's not what the Mafia is. It's an origin story. Was would be more accurate.
camdenreslink 22 hours ago [-]
At much much lower rates than accidental overdose rates assuredly.
jjk166 20 hours ago [-]
It's not sudden to the person planning the hit
keeda 18 hours ago [-]
But they’re not killing their customers (unless they want send a message, of course…)
happyopossum 20 hours ago [-]
> with Apple’s new CEO, the early signs are that commitment is headed for the ash heap as well
He’s been CEO less than a month and everything that’s happening right now has been in the works for multiple years….
fsckboy 19 hours ago [-]
that doesn't mean the early signs aren't here that that commitment is headed for the ash heap.
mrexroad 19 hours ago [-]
What, specifically, do you find to be an early sign pointing in that direction?
LoganDark 18 hours ago [-]
This didn't happen under Ternus, but Apple really needs to undo Creator Studio. It's a bad idea. Not good. Keep iCloud+ responsible for generation limits across every app. Keep apps as a one-time purchase.
fsckboy 19 hours ago [-]
my argument pointed out a flaw in the previous argument which was pointing out a perceived flaw in the previous argument: where did you get lost?
eightnoneone 23 hours ago [-]
What do you see as signs? I was hopeful that Ternus’s hardware background was a positive.
The services ads at the top of the Settings app (when you get a new iPhone or add another device to your account) have been there for years and long predate Ternus.
gumby 23 hours ago [-]
Yes, this is the problem I was referring to. There is internal opposition but the exec team will clearly turn over in the next few years (due to retirement) which will inherently bring in a team more aligned with the CEO’s objectives.
agos 21 hours ago [-]
guy has been CEO for like 3 weeks, this is not his decision. Let's see how he does
satvikpendem 22 hours ago [-]
People will complain but ultimately won't actually move away from the Apple ecosystem for it to matter to Apple.
lostlogin 17 hours ago [-]
The dubious signs (which predate Ternus) are the focus on service revenue and advertising.
Wait what are the signs that the new Apple CEO commitment is headed for the heap? Seriously asking
gumby 21 hours ago [-]
Ternus and Cue are full bore on increasing the number of ads shown in apps and otherwise scattered through their devices. This is explicitly the opposite of Apple’s philosophy until recently and Schiller is stepping back reputedly due to his opposition to this approach.
The idea appears to be to sell the devices as a vehicle for showing ads (incremental ARR) over selling them for their intrinsic customer value. You expect this kind of thing from shitty industries like cars or Google or Facebook. But this used to be an explicit “no go” for Apple.
happyopossum 20 hours ago [-]
> Ternus and Cue are full bore on increasing the number of ads shown in apps and otherwise scattered through their devices
There’s zero indication Ternus is onboard with that - Cue yes, but Ternus was not CEO when any of the stuff that is happening now was being developed
gumby 19 hours ago [-]
He was part of the management team and they know each others’ views. Schiller’s stepping back was a clear signal to me.
jjtheblunt 21 hours ago [-]
where do you get info that Ternus is about increasing number of ads? i've missed that evidently, I was at Apple engineering for several years, so for Cue i believe it just from observation, but no sense of such for Ternus.
boringg 21 hours ago [-]
That is too bad - how do you get the reins of a company that size with something antithesis to their product and identity? I hope he doesn't start trying to monetize privacy.
IAmBroom 18 hours ago [-]
> how do you get the reins of a company that size with something antithesis to their product and identity?
Poor decision making exists everywhere. Size of a company is absolutely no insurance against it. See Tesla for a specific example.
swat535 11 hours ago [-]
This happens in majority of companies.. visionaries and thought leaders leave, eventually a layer of bean counters and middle managers replace them.
Everything is then run by excel people with metrics. Innovation dies, product suffers and company spirals downward.
neutronicus 20 hours ago [-]
> how do you get the reins of a company that size with something antithesis to their product and identity?
Convince shareholders that it's been leaving money on the table.
setopt 22 hours ago [-]
To be a bit critical, haven’t Apple software and hardware quality been getting worse for years even before the new CEO?
Apple Silicon was the exception, that was truly transformative. But other things, like how polished and snappy the OS feels, seems to have been getting steadily worse.
gumby 21 hours ago [-]
I think the hardware has improved a lot over the past decade, not always in visible ways. I think this is true even if you disregard the replacement of the butterfly keyboard.
boxed 21 hours ago [-]
Hardware has been improving a lot since the low point of butterfly keyboards and no ports. Jony Ive went out the door and things improved. Then on the software side they course corrected recently after Alan Dye left. I have hope the software improvements will start to accellerate.
sitkack 21 hours ago [-]
The ads show they are out of ideas and with everything enshitifying, and a duopoly, they don't need to serve customers. just be slightly less shitty than google.
This puts them at existential risk of disruption, because it will build huge unseen pressure for customers to flee.
We saw this with Opus 4.7 - 5, losing folks to Sol when it came out. But Anthropic delivered with 5.5
bilekas 1 days ago [-]
I'm no expert, but I've always thought that adding much more risk to the lives of your customers unnecessarily is not good for business.
Someone 23 hours ago [-]
In this market, a better high for less money will attract lots of customers, even if it is less healthy than the alternative.
So, if you’re in the business of selling the somewhat healthier product, and one supplier starts to supply the otherwise superior product, that’s not good for business, either. You will lose customers.
Now, do you accept that, saying “I won’t sell that”, do you fight to outlaw the product (will be hard given at you’re not selling healthy products, either), do you fight the suppliers of the new product (a gang war) or do you add the product to your inventory?
There often isn’t a clear choice; each option has its pros and cons.
compass_copium 22 hours ago [-]
Fentanyl is not a better high. It's decidedly less euphoric than traditional opioids. It's just dirt cheap, ridiculously potent so it's easier to traffic, and doesn't have any agricultural footprint. The market pressure for fent is completely on the supply side.
talon8635 19 hours ago [-]
Fentanyl isn’t a better high is just (much) cheaper to ship/transport given its potency
throwaway63467 23 hours ago [-]
I guess if you’re the mafia you just murder the competitors. Can’t have stronger regulation than that!
bigfishrunning 23 hours ago [-]
"less healthy" is a bit of an understatement; they're not selling cigarettes that will kill you in the long term (or even the medium or short term). Fentanyl will kill you the first time you're exposed to it.
Increasing the potency of some drug with fentanyl is an interesting choice, because by the time the user *knows* how strong it is, there's some likelihood they're already dead.
Someone 23 hours ago [-]
> Fentanyl will kill you the first time you're exposed to it.
Its lethal dose is a lot smaller than that of heroin, but it isn’t guaranteed to kill. If it were, why is it used so much in medicine?
In 2015, 1,600 kilograms (3,500 pounds) were used in healthcare globally.
It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines.”
TeMPOraL 22 hours ago [-]
There's always a continuity there ("the dose makes the poison"), there's no known substance that will reliably kill you if you're exposed to a single molecule of it.
The issue with potency is that the more potent a substance, the more precise equipment and quality control you need to stay on the safe side. With fentanyl, healthcare and pharmaceutical industry can handle the precision and QC demands (which includes guarantees and maintaining public trust). Criminal enterprises cannot.
RajT88 21 hours ago [-]
Carfentanil has got to be closer to that. It is said to be up to 100x more powerful than fentanyl.
Micrograms (yes still many molecules) could be lethal
cjbgkagh 21 hours ago [-]
1.53 × 10¹⁵ molecules per 1mcg. Which is 15 orders of magnitude larger than a single molecule. If 2mg of fentanyl is considered potentially lethal that would place carfentanyl at 20mcg, though I’ve heard conflicting reports on potency with some placing it at 10x not 100x. So roughly 16-17 orders of magnitudes.
I don’t take fentanyl but I regularly take signaling peptides where the doses are typically in the mcg range and still rather potent - though with signaling peptides the response curve typically flattens out so bigger doses don’t necessarily mean stronger effects - they can be saturated. Depends on what you’re signaling though.
I had correctly predicted my hypersensitivity to semaglutide (ozempic) so started using it for treating autoimmune issues at a dose of 25mcg and I still ended up with temporary gastroparesis.
throwdown7653 22 hours ago [-]
prions perhaps?
prmph 22 hours ago [-]
Even with prions, there evidence that the body (and probably more so with some people than others) has some level of ability to resist, slow, or sometimes prevent a prion infection.
See these:
- The influence of PRNP polymorphisms on human prion disease susceptibility: an update [1]
- A naturally occurring variant of the human prion protein completely prevents prion disease | Nature [2]
You are aware that "pharmaceutical" vs "poison" is a matter of doses and control, right?
That a dose not too different from adult posology of paracetamol can be lethal?
Maybe you did not know that "heroin" was developed at Bayer (the informal name came out of the trials after the reports from the testers)...
Pharmacology is the discipline that deals with drugs.
jan_m_savage 11 hours ago [-]
Mine was an honest question because I was concerned about my kid. She recently udnerwent a 30-min GA, even so, her behaviour has considerably changed. Her personality as well. So, I am not sure why it was being downvoted, and the snark in your comment is also undeserved.
mdp2021 3 hours ago [-]
> because I was concerned about
Everytime you deal with nominal professionals you should be concerned, because their professional ability is not granted. People who deal with bodies deal with an immensely complex and subtle mechanism: they do not know it as well as needed, and their regard is easily not too different from that of Robert Liston in their evaluation of compromises - your due diligence does realistically involve verifying that values are aligned (otherwise they may decide that they can sacrifice something that for you is critically vital).
> I am not sure why it was being downvoted
Neither do I - I did not. (I did take the implied into account.)
> snark
Good: since we are here, can you kindly explain what "snark" is, because I find the term in the guidelines, I have no idea how to interpret it, I asked it a few times and I got downvoted for the question?
preg_match 8 hours ago [-]
Yes, you require analgesics for general anesthesia, it’s not optional.
The reason synthetic opioids like fentanyl are used is because they actually have less side effects. Opioids can cause a histamine response, digestive issues and constipation. Newer synthetic and hybrid opioids cause that less, so they’re preferred in hospital settings.
There’s essentially no long term risk with the small doses required during surgery. The main risk is, of course, acute respiratory depression, which kills you. This is how opioid overdoses happen. This doesn’t happen under GA because the dose is tightly controlled, and your airway is supported anyway; you’re intubated.
jan_m_savage 4 hours ago [-]
Thank you very much for your kind response-- unlike the midwits who took issue with my question.
bigfishrunning 22 hours ago [-]
I don't know about kids, but yes it is used in general anesthesia.
jan_m_savage 11 hours ago [-]
Thanks. That is alarming. I wonder what the long-term side effects would be even for one time, which my kid underwent. She is not the same anymore. She used to be so joyous.
dranudin 20 hours ago [-]
yes. They used it for a heart surgery on a new born that I know.
jan_m_savage 11 hours ago [-]
Thanks. I asked because I didn't know, and my kid had undergone a surgery. The downvote was undeserved-- but maybe it also tells us something.
asdfasvea 9 hours ago [-]
>>>>Fentanyl will kill you the first time you're exposed to it.
This is why DARE failed. You can't blatantly lie about everything just because you want what's best for people. At some point people find out you're a liar and don't believe a thing you say.
IAmBroom 18 hours ago [-]
> Fentanyl will kill you the first time you're exposed to it.
Fentanyl may in some cases kill you the first time you're exposed to it.
The way you state it, there are zero fentanyl addicts in the world today.
22 hours ago [-]
burningChrome 20 hours ago [-]
There were rumors that that the "Chapitos" in Sinaloa purportedly banned the production and sale of fentanyl in their territories.
There were signs warning of this and if I remember correctly, they murdered two major fentanyl cooks, put their bodies on the side of a road, along with a warning sign and two huge piles of the drug around the bodies.
pleasantpeasant 20 hours ago [-]
Drugs are a lot more geopolitical than people realize. Who brings drugs in and why drugs are coming into your country are important questions that nations have to ask.
samudrijan 19 hours ago [-]
CIA, Oliver North and Reagan would like a word.
jackb4040 19 hours ago [-]
The Fort Bragg Cartel and LASD would like a word
mdp2021 24 hours ago [-]
And: shaking the scene in a way that will attract too much attention, including crackdowns, is very bad for business.
scyzoryk_xyz 24 hours ago [-]
Almost like it's not really about "business" at all and something more is going on for all the parties involved
joinHNtheysaid 24 hours ago [-]
Yes, internal destabilizing of the oppossition is a tried and well working oractice of inter empire warfare..
mdp2021 1 days ago [-]
Soon after John Stewart Mill we assessed that markets are not perfect.
Accelerations in the different directions of bounded incentives create as-if Brownian motions, - not the stability towards optimality of a perfect organic model.
Or: what you write is rational, but people are easily not... The supply side should disappear from the market when irrational, but changes are slow..
UpsideDownRide 24 hours ago [-]
Did we? Because while seemingly obvious nowadays it is not a settled matter in orthodox econ academia.
mdp2021 22 hours ago [-]
Yes. Everybody here should be or get acquainted with Herbert Simon - he is both "Logic Theory Machine" and "General Problem Solver" and "linked lists", and "bounded rationality" and "satisficing".
People would benefit from learning some control theory too. A little tinkering with (even abstract) PID controllers can quickly disabuse one of the notion that feedback loops settle instantly.
arealaccount 24 hours ago [-]
If its cheap enough to be worth letting a few customers churn, then profits will be positive
When there are enough customers, individual customers do not matter.
whycome 23 hours ago [-]
Making it up with volume
Mistletoe 23 hours ago [-]
Maybe the mafia saw the population curves and realized how precious each customer is now and will be in the future. Something tech companies would be wise to think about...
And the curve is the same across almost all the world. Italy is 1.3, you need 2.1 to even tread water and keep the population you have. Who buys the stocks and fentanyl when each year you have less and less buyers?
jll29 18 hours ago [-]
Italians need to make more babies - or there's going to be a serious pizza baker shortage by 2030!
(It follows straight from the general population decrease.)
IAmBroom 18 hours ago [-]
There's also the reality of some glimmer of patriotism and care for one's neighborhoods. If Italy nosedives into a fentanyl epidemic, that will both decrease the public image of the Families (which isn't completely negative throughout Italy), and decrease the quality of live where they live.
Sure, they're OK with some heroin addicts. I'm suggesting they drew a line in the sand.
I think it’s what customers want though as it gets you higher and closer to that high they’re always chasing. That it can kill you is a marketing feature if anything.
petesergeant 24 hours ago [-]
The rest of the economics behind fentanyl are great for drug producers vs heroin though, so it probably doesn't matter?
retired 24 hours ago [-]
You just need to keep your customers alive long enough.
70% of food in the supermarket is ultra processed. But as long as people make it to 65 years old they are still good customers. That is still 50 years of sales.
TeMPOraL 22 hours ago [-]
> 70% of food in the supermarket is ultra processed.
Yes. And 70% of Earth atmosphere is nitrogen.
The two figures have about the same relevance to health.
thefz 24 hours ago [-]
They still traffic heroin though, which is not stellar for customer's life expectancy.
be8e9dmrro 24 hours ago [-]
[dead]
oefrha 23 hours ago [-]
Oxycontin was built on the idea of turning a drug (MS Contin) for the terminally ill (too small a market) to a lifelong dependency for as many people as possible, and each taking as many milligrams as possible.
bluGill 23 hours ago [-]
I know several doctors who mourn the addiction issues with Oxycontin because it was so useful for a lot of cases. Give someone some Oxycontin, then you can address the root problems, and then get them off - works very well... Now they won't give it to anybody - those addicted know exactly what to say to sound like the people who really need it.
dfxm12 24 hours ago [-]
Tell this to junk food manufacturers...
SXX 24 hours ago [-]
Junk food dont have a chance to kill a person on first try or high chances to kill them withih a year or so.
Lio 23 hours ago [-]
I was going to make a joke about how it depends on how fast you eat it but you're absolutely right.
Tobacco is incredibly damaging but because it doesn't kill you right away we tolerate it.
There's probably a rather grim metric that defines time to death ratio for addictive substances somewhere in a government report.
master-lincoln 23 hours ago [-]
I think you are right, but doesn't that mean the consequences of fentanyl do not weigh in on society as badly as junk food? Dead people do not cause extra costs for the rest of society
SXX 23 hours ago [-]
I can understand where is your cynical take comes from, but even from that perspective I would say you're wrong. Having people around who are burden to their families, friends and society is a "good" thing.
When you grow up in a society and see results of gambling, tabacco, alcohol and drug addictions around you that usually deter you from a getting into it. It does not deter everyone, but society actually sees the consequences.
Same with junk food and obesity - when you have people in your family struggle with weight, diabetis and tons of related health issues that's give you more healthy outlook on life.
This is why drugs that kill people fast are so dangerous - because you dont see addicts around you who sttugle to find meaning in life for years because heroine burned their brain. People just start to use and die, fast.
It's not even just about food or drugs. This is how Russia wage a war for 5 years with 400,000 people dead via mercenary army. Society dont see the scale of war because almost no one returns so people keep selling their life for $50,000 thinking its a good way to make money or get rid of debts.
markus_zhang 23 hours ago [-]
Now we have the unions, we have the gambling - and they're the best things to have - but narcotics is the thing of the future. Now if we don't get a piece of that action, we risk everything we have. I mean, not now, but ten years from now.
pluc 1 days ago [-]
This was the way it worked up here (in QC) with the 81s. If you sold shit that could draw attention to you, your organization or suppliers, you were swiftly taught not to. They had decent quality control, but as their grip slipped so did quality. Now we get fentanyl overdoses weekly.
skrebbel 24 hours ago [-]
I googled so y'all don't have to: "QC" means Quebec. 81 means Hell's Angels as per sister comment.
nsavage 24 hours ago [-]
I'll be honest, this was helpful for me even as someone who lives about 2km from the Quebec border. I was uncertain as you don't often see it in the Hacker News context.
pluc 24 hours ago [-]
We gotta take back the letter Q man, it's either us or Qatar and I don't see them campaigning. There's dozens of us!
mdp2021 22 hours ago [-]
Since this is the "footnotes" branch,
> There's dozens of us!
~~ Arrested Development (the "Never Nude" syndrome)
AnthOlei 19 hours ago [-]
I actually never knew what this was from. Unironically useful context
skrebbel 23 hours ago [-]
Plus it’s a weird abbreviation! Like Ontario isn’t “OO”. Or does the C in Quebec stand for Canada? That’s kinda weird too tbh.
pluc 22 hours ago [-]
> Or does the C in Quebec stand for Canada?
them's fighting words
Saskatchewan is SK and Manitoba is MB if you want weird
Until you explained I was having so much fun thinking of a quality control department in the 80s dealing drugs on the side.
newsclues 24 hours ago [-]
81 = Hells Angels
Who these days are more a front org for the CCP/triads who seem to be running much of the criminal underworld in Canada with their network of smuggling and money laundering.
My theory is that the CCP/triads leveraged drug addiction within the HA and killed anyone that objected, and everyone else got rich...
pluc 24 hours ago [-]
There's been a criminal civil war raging between HAs and every other smaller org that wants to expand (look at Blood Family Mafia specifically, Arab Power as well). HAs have lost some feathers in pretty gruesome ways. They're all older and neglected to replenish the ranks in order to preserve prestige. Street gangs didn't. If I'm competing in that world, I'm funding the underdogs until leadership trembles, then we make a deal. I believe we're at that point now. All those groups - including the Sicilians - have all been slowly invalidated and Angels are appearing more stable/powerful these days (even though we just outlawed their colours - but even that gives them prestige).
newsclues 24 hours ago [-]
Montreal and Quebec is only one part of the criminal world in Canada.
Ontario is different, East Coast is different, prairies are different and the West Coast is it's own beast.
HA uses puppet gangs, so while their power may be diminished, they are still lurking in the background, as key nodes for drugs, money and guns.
The power lost by the HA and traditional mafia has largely been taken over by CCP/triads groups. The Indian and Iranian OC are under the Chinese, who have deep into the government and economy as major developers. Read Sam Cooper.
pluc 23 hours ago [-]
Of course, of course. As a Quebecer, I never speak for the ROC ;)
skrebbel 20 hours ago [-]
CCP = Chinese Communist Party?
ROC = Taiwan?
Can’t be, right?
pluc 20 hours ago [-]
ROC is the Rest of Canada
19 hours ago [-]
ginko 20 hours ago [-]
Why do you keep using confusing abbreviations like that?
16 hours ago [-]
hnrprtlpdb 1 days ago [-]
Did wastewater drug monitoring for a while, and the annoying bit was fentanyl metabolites sitting near the detection limit, so absence isn't proof.
vintermann 1 days ago [-]
From what I understand this uses overdose numbers. They should also not be assumed to be comparable across countries (recording practices vary widely), but if they tell the same story as wastewater monitoring there may be something to it.
dmos62 1 days ago [-]
Was that because there wasn't much fentanyl use or because fentanyl metabolites are somehow harder to detect?
vintermann 24 hours ago [-]
I assume drugs that are potent in tiny quantities leave less metabolites.
tantalor 23 hours ago [-]
If it's below the noise floor, then you didn't really detect it, did you.
bluGill 23 hours ago [-]
Statistics can detect a lot of things below the noise floor given enough samples. However there are a lot of questions when it attempts this.
artisinal 24 hours ago [-]
Does wastewater drug monitoring account / offset for constipation caused by drug use?
There isn't anything to measure if the poop is unable to leave the end-user.
rithdmc 23 hours ago [-]
I believe it's urine based.
Either way, the constipation would affect different users at different times, so I don't think it would matter to the data. In other words, your idea stinks ;)
artisinal 23 hours ago [-]
Well if the user dies of constipation the poop never enters the sewer :)
astura 23 hours ago [-]
Drugs are detected in urine, not feces.
genericacct 24 hours ago [-]
I'm afraid some crime syndicates have found out they can just steal it from hospitals, some 80 vials went missing from the ospedale israelitico in Rome during the summer and there are already reports of an increase of users in the outskirts of the city..
And who is keeping it out of the other European countries?
talon8635 19 hours ago [-]
Isn’t mafia responsible for large (though not all) EU import and distribution?
criley2 23 hours ago [-]
Fentanyl is made by Mexican cartels from Chinese precursors. I suppose there aren't many Mexico's with massive organized crime networks in Europe to pour deadly drugs into their countries.
boelboel 23 hours ago [-]
Guinea-bissau is basically a narco state, much more so than Mexico, and has deep ties with latin-american cartels. They transport their drugs in the sahel with the help of jihadists. The same jihadists get funding from moroccans to smuggle their hash. These networks got deep networks within Europe (e.g. in Belgium and Netherlands). It might not be as bad yet but could turn worse quickly.
master-lincoln 23 hours ago [-]
what do you think where europe gets their cocaine from...
TFNA 23 hours ago [-]
Not Mexico. Cocaine is a South American product and there is a direct route to Europe (or, sometimes, indirect via e.g. Guinea-Bissau).
bigfishrunning 23 hours ago [-]
The same place Mexico gets it; Colombia, Bolivia, Nicaragua. Mexico just isn't "on the way" in the same way for Europe.
jmpman 22 hours ago [-]
I've had a friend pass from an OD, when consuming what he thought was cocaine, which was actually laced with fentanyl. I wonder if the Italian mafia has a more profitable cocaine market, and don't want it contaminated, as is likely to happen with fentanyl, as the cocaine market, which I assume is recreational, would contract.
m101 22 hours ago [-]
There is not that much difference between the state and a mafia. The fact that the mafia has successfully managed to keep out fentanyl shows just how much democratically elected states are failing their citizens. This outcome is not surprising.
mr_00ff00 22 hours ago [-]
It’s way easier to keep fentanyl out of drugs when you are distributing the drugs.
The government can’t regulate a black market.
TremendousJudge 21 hours ago [-]
The government can’t regulate a black market, but they could stop the charade of illegal drugs, convert the black market into a regular market, and regulate that. Suddenly you get less fentanyl overdoses, better outcomes for addicts (they're not criminals anymore), AND you remove the power of drug cartels (they'll still exist, but will compete with each other through less murder-y means, like any other capitalist company). Plus, stabilize a lot of third world countries where illegal drug production and export is a big part of the economy, which is what allows the cartels to fight and corrupt the state.
Or, just keep doing what they're doing. It's bound to work eventually, right? Drug cartels are definitely growing less powerful every year, the war of drugs is being won, rate of addiction is going down.
seki285 20 hours ago [-]
I'd rather we try than give up and make a deal with the enemy.
frumplestlatz 20 hours ago [-]
You would like to state to be in the business of permitting the sale of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, et al?
Or perhaps selling it directly?
Has this ever worked? Do you have any evidence whatsoever that this is a good idea?
1d22a 2 hours ago [-]
Switzerland has prescription heroin to provide a safe supply to people addicted, as Diaphin (diacetylmorphine) 200mg. This dosage is huge and lethal for for someone without a tolerance.
cwillu 16 hours ago [-]
The state is already in the business of permitting the sale of methamphetamine: Desoxyn is FDA approved.
pas 21 hours ago [-]
Lot of democratically elected states are also good at "keeping fentanly out".
spacephysics 21 hours ago [-]
This is a bit of a straw man “do the ends justify the means” statement, with hints of anarchism read between the lines.
Western democracies haven’t really prioritized “war on drugs” (for lack of a better term) over the last probably 10ish years. Yeah there’s still funding and initiatives and some lip service.
Instead the focus has been largely infighting and major political factions fighting for political power in the next generation (“tech bros” political class for one)
So it’s no surprise state-sponsored (and just demand driven) drug trafficking into the US hasn’t received much action.
There is some hope though. With rare earth mineral access being a major national security priority, and many cartels controlling those areas in SA, the converging interests may produce some net positive. Background: https://youtu.be/q_n-74ifBZs?is=nw5g-mmPmKphGH2W
m101 20 hours ago [-]
A war on drugs can only be won through heavy penalties on the users and the political classes refuse to come down hard on the users (themselves, their children) but rather come down hard on the dealers (poor people) or traffickers (foreigners). For this reason we never really had a war on drugs, just lip service towards one, hence a failure of government.
mktemp-d 21 hours ago [-]
This is a false equivalence, which means equating two things based on surface similarities while ignoring key differences.
The Mafia keeping fentanyl out isn't a public service. It's a cartel protecting its own drug market, which says nothing about whether democratic states ( globally ) are failing their citizens.
lawgimenez 24 hours ago [-]
From what I’ve read online Ndrangheta are much more powerful than the mafia in Italy.
qubex 21 hours ago [-]
“Le Mafie” includes Cosa Nostra (Sicilian mafia) ‘Ndrangheta (Calabrian mafia), Camorra (Napolitano mafia), Sacra Corona Unita (Pugliese mafia), Banda della Magliana (Roman mafia), Mala del Brenta (Veneto mafia) and others (but I’m no expert, I’m from Milan).
simonh 23 hours ago [-]
That’s arguably true, but nowadays Mafia or the plural “le Mafie” (the Mafias) is often used as a catch all term for such organised crime groups in Italy, with the Sicilians referred to as the Cosa Nostra.
shell0x 21 hours ago [-]
The Singapore model is to execute all the dealers.
Sparkle-san 20 hours ago [-]
The Singapore model is also to be a 750km^2 microstate island. American laws around drugs have always been punitive and you could fit Singapore inside your average county.
everybodyknows 18 hours ago [-]
Absence of land borders simplifies the problem considerably.
shell0x 12 hours ago [-]
There is a land border with Malaysia.
fittingopposite 6 hours ago [-]
How many km?
m101 20 hours ago [-]
And heavily punish the users (which is the only way to actually win a war on drugs)
Sparkle-san 20 hours ago [-]
The evidence doesn't seem to bear this out. Texas has punitive laws around drug use and also plenty of drug users.
mexicocitinluez 22 hours ago [-]
The Godfather overly romanticized the mafia and made them out to be "violent but in a principled way" people and nothing could be further from the truth.
It's complete fantasy that the mafia didn't deal hard drugs.
"'The Godfather' was the glorification of a bunch of bums who never existed."
TeMPOraL 22 hours ago [-]
Well, I don't buy the "principled" part either, not at scale.
But it is organized, and there's not that much fundamental difference between corporations and criminal enterprises, not in the ways they are run. The details boil down to different trade-offs taken wrt. risk vs. reward related to staying on the good side of the law. A lot of the violence (particularly the "principled"-looking one) seems to stem from the fact that a criminal org needs to built its own layer of coordination and enforcement, since by definition it cannot rely on public services of law enforcement and the legal system.
mexicocitinluez 20 hours ago [-]
There is no need to stay "on the good side of the law." They pay off cops. They pay off the judges.
If they can kill with impunity they can certainly do the same with drugs.
Large-scale crack cocaine gangs existed too with substantial levels of organization but they still sell crack.
They're mostly unintelligent thugs motivated by greed. And I think the "Why would they kill their own customers?" implies they think that far ahead. Which is probably true as well for most major corps. They'll take short term profit over quite literally anything.
RunSet 10 hours ago [-]
"Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief..."
Public healthcare is keeping illegal Fentanyl out of Italy: there's no incentive to obtain contraband painkillers, which are not considered fun drugs.
You go to the hospital, you get the medications you need (and no more) for as long as you need them, and then you stop (or you deal with chronic conditions under medical control).
linkregister 20 hours ago [-]
Is this an inference from first principles, or is there data to corroborate this?
anorphirith 20 hours ago [-]
if that was the case, then most of europe would have matching numbers as italy
silverFork 23 hours ago [-]
Not in their own backyard!
yesitcan 10 hours ago [-]
That’s a shame. I used to love sprinkling some on my pizza and spaghetti. Buon appetito.
GreenLightGo 23 hours ago [-]
Humanity is being poisoned from all sides. The scariest part is that people willingly go along with it.
glimshe 1 days ago [-]
"For years I paid my people extra so they wouldn't do that kind of business. Somebody comes to them and says, 'I have powders; if you put up three, four thousand dollar investment, we can make fifty thousand distributing.' So they can't resist. I want to control it as a business, to keep it respectable. I don't want it near schools! I don't want it sold to children! That's an infamia."
When AI can write screenplays like this one, then it's game over.
dmos62 1 days ago [-]
Expand? This is part of plot to The Godfather. Not what you'd call exotic, I'd think?
glimshe 24 hours ago [-]
It's just considered one of the best movies and screenplays of all time. My quote is a relevant line in said movie.
nixon_why69 22 hours ago [-]
You missed the kicker at the end where he says just sell it to the blacks, they're animals anyways. Leaving that out makes it sound noble.
glimshe 22 hours ago [-]
That was deliberate. I don't think a casual reader, like most are, would have understood the nuance and the post would have been another casualty of indignation culture. I got downvotes as it was!
nixon_why69 22 hours ago [-]
Fair, it could sound like you were endorsing it instead of just sharing a wicked movie quote.
loopydosuette 1 days ago [-]
the internet is full of let-me-tell-you-a-quick-story like this one. so AI can and nothing is over, ma dude. nothing will ever be over.
pvaldes 23 hours ago [-]
Totally different healthcare systems, and no sane doctor will commit the same mistake again.
bell-cot 21 hours ago [-]
That I've heard, on the street, the Mafia is a credible alternative state power in a fair fraction of Italy. Just one not claiming Democratic ideals, nor much desire to become a nation state or adopt a political agenda.
Wielding power to benefit the ordinary people, long-term, is an age-old sign that those wielding the power have and/or aspire to some level of long-term legitimacy and popular support. Doesn't matter if you're looking at early Chinese dynasties, Old Testament kings, or modern authoritarian states banning non-government organizations.
shevy-java 23 hours ago [-]
> IN “The Godfather”, Don Vito Corleone refuses to engage in the heroin trade because he considers it “a dirty business”.
The movie was well-planned by Francis - but the mafia is a mass-murder organisation, without exception. Japan finally got the better of Yakuza for the most part (it is nowhere near as powerful as it was once); Italy still struggles, in particular with regards to Ndrangheta. So any article that attempts to white-wash the mafia in Italy - nope, sorry, not even good movies such as the godfather should disguise the mass-murder organisation. See how they bombed Giovanni Falcone to death, let's not forget that; and more recently how Ndrangheta executed women (2026; see https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39mr81j2j1o) who stopped being silent about the genocidal activities of Ndrangheta. Let's put it short: the mafia needs to be eliminated completely. It's not easy since they infiltrated so much in Italy and in parts elsewhere (just study how Capone in the USA got big, then you realise that the USA has an even bigger problem here - plus, fentanyl too), but it has to be done. There is no alternative unless you want organisations to undermine the state and continue its genocidal tendencies. You can be sure they are also involved in smuggling weapons, thus contributing to genocide outside of Italy directly as well.
Please no more white-washing articles of the mafia as glorious heroes "because they keep fentanyl out of Italy". (Besides, this is not even correct to begin with; fentanyal at the least right now, plays a very small role in Europe at best; in the USA this is different. See how Trump tries to blame Canadians for Fentanyl, smuggled via eggs, which is another one of his non-stop lies about Canadians.)
epolanski 22 hours ago [-]
A better representation of real Italian mafia in movies is offered by the TV show Gomorrah.
It's a strong antidote to those romanticizing crime.
The first two seasons are great, watch it with subtitles (fun fact: in Italy it was also shown in tv with subs because most people cannot understand neapolitan dialect).
TheMayorOfDunce 21 hours ago [-]
it is absolutely critical to watch Gomorrah in Italian. The English dubs are comically poor quality (think of how MS Word used to emotionlessly read text aloud).
epolanski 20 hours ago [-]
* in neapolitan :D
IAmBroom 16 hours ago [-]
A language is a dialect with a navy. :)
mexicocitinluez 22 hours ago [-]
Thank you. I said the same thing in another comment.
> 'The Godfather' was the glorification of a bunch of bums who never existed.
— Orson Welles
qoez 24 hours ago [-]
I always assumed this was an america-only drug that no one actually does or at least not to the excess that it's claimed by the publications using it for the normal fear journalism purposes.
gwbas1c 22 hours ago [-]
It's very appealing to smugglers because its ultra-high potency means that a massive amount of doses is very, very tiny.
Thus, no surprise that it shows up elsewhere.
HelloNurse 20 hours ago [-]
It must be appealing to people who want to get high, and heroin seems vastly superior in the same general category.
gwbas1c 20 hours ago [-]
Generally, when someone is addicted to painkillers, they "take what they can get." (After all, they are addicted.)
The black market is very inconsistent with what it provides, (because it is unregulated,) thus "heroin" may have fentanyl in it; or may not even be available. (Because it's easier to smuggle fentanyl.)
ozlikethewizard 23 hours ago [-]
Its gaining popularity in the UK and is starting to show up sporadically, but the opiod epidemic provided pretty extreme fuel to start the fire in America. No idea if itll ever take off here to the extent heroin did, depends on the economy I guess.
karolist 22 hours ago [-]
based on documentary style interviews I've seen of drug addicts in Lithuania, there's supposedly no more old school heroin left on the streets, it's been pushed out by fent.
Obscurity4340 20 hours ago [-]
Simple supply and demand. Why risk smuggling heroin when fentanyl is 100s of times more potent, meaning its way better bang for their buck all other things being equal.
Does lithuania not have methadone or prescribable diamorphine? They should reconsider if not, not everyone is going to make it sober, much cheaper and better outcomes to being pragmatic about it.
23 hours ago [-]
0xbadcafebee 24 hours ago [-]
2/3 of all ODs in US. More deaths per year than gun violence and car collisions combined, which are both quite high in US. Seventh most common cause of death overall. Over a quarter million people dead since 2018.
catchnear4321 23 hours ago [-]
it’s an issue in that not everyone using it even knows they are using it. maybe you think your plug is a great hookup for grey market pharmaceuticals. or are they?
selling “oxycodone”? maybe don’t bother acquiring oxycodone at all—press fentanyl into a convincing little blue pill and sell that instead.
selling “adderall”? methamphetamine is cheaper. counterfeit xanax? who knows what benzo is actually in it.
customer might not find out.
customer might not even live.
mafia seems delightfully old school about this. they know business. this is bad business.
talon8635 19 hours ago [-]
It’s used in hospitals all over the globe
carlosjobim 21 hours ago [-]
If it can happen to Americans, then why do you think it can't happen to you? What's the differentiating factor?
mitxela 20 hours ago [-]
Unpredictable market forces the black market is subjected to. Europe doesn't have as much fentanyl for the same sorts of reasons America doesn't have as much ketamine.
0xbadcafebee 20 hours ago [-]
Yes and no? Certainly America has a bigger opioid market and Europe has a bigger ketamine market, for different reasons; America had a prescription opioid epidemic create its market, and Europe's much larger EDM party scene gravitated towards ketamine. Europeans also get much more treatment for opioid addiction (half of them!). But you never know what's going to change; America certainly didn't expect to be flooded with cheap prescription pills, and we can't predict if the drug lords of Europe will decide to start cutting their heroin with fentanyl.
criley2 23 hours ago [-]
No one "does" fentanyl, it's a highly addictive additive that is secretly added to other things. Even so, 50,000 - 70,000 Americans per year die to it (more than suicide and gun violence many other things).
This is an "American" thing because fent primarily comes from Mexican cartels (Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation).
They buy precursors from China, they produce it in labs in Mexico, and then smuggle it into America where they kill 50,000 to 70,000 Americans per year.
Not getting political here -- but what would you think if organized crime in a neighboring country was murdering 50,000 to 70,000 of your countrymen per year?
Eyas 23 hours ago [-]
Some things to correct here:
- While drugs laced with fentanyl are also a problem, lots of people _do_ knowingly consume fentanyl. In fact, it has replaced Heroin in the US 'market', for example. It is also a contaminant in other drugs (cocaine, meth), due to how easy it is for fentanyl to stay in crevices, etc. It is also 'snuck in' to counterfeit pills, which is the only aspect you mention.
- The traffickers physically moving fentanyl into the country are overwhelmingly Americans. Pre 2019 traffickers used to get this straight from China, but stricter controls in China have shifted things to be staged in Mexico instead.
- The demand and traffickers are still largely American, and it is a "symbiotic" problem. US drug demand is empowering Mexican cartels and making everyday Mexicans less safe (the cartels also get most of their guns from the US). At the same time, powerful Mexican cartels mean it is much easier to "stage" fentanyl in Mexico then import it into the US than the older model of importing it directly from China.
23 hours ago [-]
master-lincoln 23 hours ago [-]
It's not murder. People are not forced to take fentanyl...
Wouldn't these people get into a different drug if it wasn't fentanyl?
geoduck14 23 hours ago [-]
While I agree that "murder" is the wrong word, there is an angle that you are missing.
Drug dealers will lace "normal" drugs with fentanyl. It gives a "different buzz". The customer knows they are buying "normal" drugs, and there is no quality control, so lacing happens. If the dealer messes up how much they lace, it is easy to add too much (because a small amount t of fentanyl goes a long way), and your customer ODs.
janderson215 22 hours ago [-]
I’ve heard from an HSI friend that a lot more of the fentanyl deaths happen from accidental exposure in their drugs from shared surfaces. For example, somebody buying cocaine that was cut up on a table that was previously used to cut up fent and not properly sanitized.
themaninthedark 22 hours ago [-]
Manslaughter is the word you are looking for, they don't intend for the person to die.
master-lincoln 23 hours ago [-]
I was indeed missing that angle. Thanks for mentioning it
javier123454321 23 hours ago [-]
A lot of times people think they're getting a different drug that happens to be laced
foobarian 23 hours ago [-]
As Arturo Salazar said, "Addicts? They treat themselves... they overdose, and there is one less to worry about." Dark movie
addandsubtract 21 hours ago [-]
Fentanyl is also given to people in hospitals (in the US), getting people hooked.
criley2 23 hours ago [-]
So if you bought a bottle of water, and inside of that water was a poison that kills you, intentionally added by a criminal because it makes them more profit, that's not murder?
Those people were doing a line of coke, they had no idea they were about to overdose on an opioid.
criddell 23 hours ago [-]
> that's not murder?
Well, that depends on the legal definition of murder where you live.
In lots of places, intent matters. You said the pill was added with the intent to make more money. If there was no intent to kill, then in lots of places that isn't murder but might be some other kind of criminal homicide.
For example, people at Ford made the decision to sell the Pinto with a dangerous defect to make more money and people died as a direct consequence of that product decision. The people who made that decision were not charged with murder (or anything as far as I recall).
balderdash 21 hours ago [-]
Look up extreme indifference murder or depraved heart murder - I think you’ll find it exactly fits the context of this discussion
Also I think they charged people in the ford pinto case with reckless homicide but they got off.
criddell 21 hours ago [-]
It does fit the context of this discussion but, like I said, not every jurisdiction has those definitions of murder.
carlosjobim 21 hours ago [-]
Why do we assume as a fact that the kind of person who becomes a fentanyl dealer wouldn't also take great pleasure in killing their clients?
IAmBroom 18 hours ago [-]
I've known homeless people and desperate addicts. Many of them would deal in whatever, to feed themselves. That is wildly different from "They would enjoy kill a stranger."
criddell 20 hours ago [-]
You'd have the accused prove their innocence rather than the state prove their guilt?
carlosjobim 18 hours ago [-]
No. But I find it strange that people categorically say that a drug dealer never would intentionally kill a buyer. They are violent criminals dealing in poison. They are not perfectly rational businessmen who would never do a thing which could hurt future profits.
17 hours ago [-]
17 hours ago [-]
master-lincoln 23 hours ago [-]
That I would see as extreme recklessness leading to somebody dying, might be called murder in the US. I wasn't aware this is happening on a larger scale. The solution could be to vote for politicians that legalize drugs so users can get them safely
airstrike 23 hours ago [-]
With the minor difference that water is a dangerous, illegal substance.
pixl97 22 hours ago [-]
Quite a few fent deaths are people coming in secondary contact with it.
jjk166 19 hours ago [-]
Which is even further from murder
mapkkk 23 hours ago [-]
I would argue that fent became an issue only after the oxycontin et al. peddling was slowly curtailed; together with fent precursors becoming absurdly cheap to procure and process, compared to other opiates. Users originally hooked on the pills needed a replacement, and as suddenly the chemistry got much cheaper, everyone switched to fent. The physical volume of illicit substance you need to smuggle is also lower with fentanyl, so I'm sure that would have played into this trend as well.
If you want to find where to point the finger to, the systems that let prescription opiates be prescribed with such reckless abandon is a good superficial target. Getting political here - if you want to find the very root cause of all this, I would present the institutions that prevent the implementation or otherwise erode preexisting social safety-nets as the culpable party.
mexicocitinluez 22 hours ago [-]
> would argue that fent became an issue only after the oxycontin et al.
No, the pain pill debacle of the early aughts actually led to heroin usage.
What caused the rise of fentanyl was the US getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan and the Taliban (or whoever took over) burning the poppy fields.
ulimn 23 hours ago [-]
But who buys these drugs with fentanyl and why? There might a link I'm missing, sorry! :)
mbil 23 hours ago [-]
Here’s reporting on the fentanyl crisis, covering who buys the drugs and why
Oh my... Thank you for the link but I couldn't bear to watch it so I just read the summary. It hurts to watch these people.
mbil 22 hours ago [-]
Sorry, I should’ve provided a warning. It is sad that something so distressing is just the daily reality for thousands of Americans.
bulletsvshumans 23 hours ago [-]
It's incorporated into pills that appear to be equivalent to prescribed opioids like Oxycodone. From buyer perspective it's just a cheap opioid pill.
geoduck14 23 hours ago [-]
It is typically laced into other drugs. A small amount of fentanyl is highly powerful, so if you mix it into heroine, you get a different buzz. But if you (a drug dealer, not a chemist) mess up and drop too much, then your customer will accidentally OD.
criley2 23 hours ago [-]
Tiny bits of fentanyl are added to a variety of recreational drugs used extensively by all kinds of people, rich and poor. They add it to cocaine, heroin, meth and even marijuana. They imitate oxy, percocet, vicodin, xanax and adderal using fent laced pills as well.
As much as 20% of Americans use these recreational drugs. Europeans on average use recreational drugs like half as much as Americans, maybe 10% use them.
airstrike 23 hours ago [-]
Yeah but there's always the alternative of not doing coke, heroin, meth or even marijuana.
nom 22 hours ago [-]
> and even marijuana
ok so you are just spreading FUD
nkrisc 23 hours ago [-]
They’re not coming here and forcibly injecting people. Maybe we should be asking ourselves why so many are choosing the oblivion offered by drugs similar to and including fentanyl.
The only reason they’re selling it is because people are buying it.
It’s an American problem.
skeptic_ai 22 hours ago [-]
What about the American McDonald’s that kills much more in Europe?
achenet 22 hours ago [-]
> Not getting political here -- but what would you think if organized crime in a neighboring country was murdering 50,000 to 70,000 of your countrymen per year?
I'd blame myself for giving them that market, and then I'd start pushing hard for a drug policy that actually makes sense, as opposed trying to continue a policy of drug prohibition which has spent the last 100+ years [0] completely failing to do anything but give money to criminals whilst having almost no effect on actual drug consumption.
The government's job is to protect its taxpayers. If the taxpayers have a demand for drugs, which is clearly the case with the US, then the government should stop cosplaying a pearl-clutching 19th-century Victorian housewife and start regulating the drug trade properly, the way it does with alcohol and cigarettes.
Will this solve all problems? No. So long there is misery in the world, there will be people trying to escape that misery.
But at least American opiate addicts will have fewer overdoses, and therefore hopefully contribute more to tax revenue.
When doing the right thing regarding things like addiction are tried in the US, there seems to be a habit of learning the wrong lesson. Attempts to apply the successful Portuguese model have failed because decriminalisation by itself is just an enabler of what _really_ helps, which is all the follow-up support.
And don't get me started on how public health interventions in general seem to end up treated as moral hazards or wasteful in the US, even when they're _saving_ money...
I can't read the article but if it's true, can the mafia come to Canada please? /s
LastTrain 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
schiffern 1 days ago [-]
Found the mafia. ;)
These comments are oddly common, but I've never understood the value of simply repeating the definition of uncertainty words like "may." Who is being informed here?
bmacho 23 hours ago [-]
> Who is being informed here?
I am being informed about the public opinion. Which I value more than articles. (Don't come me at with AI, I'm well aware that it makes all human communication bad and pointless in theory and more and more in practice, thx.)
bnegreve 24 hours ago [-]
Not every correlation deserves to be published in the press. If you think about it, it is weird that they even make articles out of statements that only "may" be true.
mdp2021 24 hours ago [-]
It is a matter of thresholds, of consequential bets over provisional non-trivial assessments, and of journalistic duty (taking note - the idea is not from the analyst but from sources; journalists take note that sources made statements).
Analysts work speculatively. And the results of the speculation are not trivial when supported by strong elements.
gilrain 23 hours ago [-]
> If you think about it, it is weird that they even make articles out of statements that only "may" be true.
I thought about it. And it's very stupid to imagine uncertainty should be off limits. I hope that isn't what you meant.
bnegreve 23 hours ago [-]
I'm saying the incentive to publish articles that make strong claims with little evidence may be problematic.
schiffern 14 hours ago [-]
"May is right in the headline" and "strong claim" don't go together.
I prefer error bars be worn on the sleeve, so I find "may" on display to be refreshing, not dismaying. YMMV
What's your alternate explanation to explain the absence of fentanyl in Italy, and how can my country get so weirdly randomly lucky?
bnegreve 6 hours ago [-]
Errors are fine when they are due to a random process. When the press pick up claims because they are likely to attract readers it's a different story. Errors are not random, they are the result of an optimization process and are very unlikely to happen on the other side of the claim. (For example consider the overwhelming number of articles that have been published with the title "Scientist may have found life on mars" over the past 30 years)
For this reason, "may" in a press article, doesn't carry the same meaning regarding uncertainty than "may" in common language. Which is why I disagree with your comment:
> I've never understood the value of simply repeating the definition of uncertainty words like "may."
In the contrary, I think it is worth reminding people what may actually means here.
Now, I agree with what you and others have said about the usefulness of discussing uncertain claims, and I don't think there is a real disagreement here.
mdp2021 1 days ago [-]
There is one "access free" paragraph in the page... "Police are coming to the conclusion".
jrflowers 1 days ago [-]
What do you think may means
edit: What do you think other people think that may means
LastTrain 24 hours ago [-]
I think it means just that, which is why I used TL;DR? The article points out the correlation between mafia prevalence and lack of fentanyl overdoses and some speculation on whether those two things are connected.
mdp2021 24 hours ago [-]
> speculation
Not any speculation but educated guesses from knowledgeable people.
jrflowers 15 hours ago [-]
What did you think other people would think “may” meant before your clarifying post?
vr46 1 days ago [-]
TL;DR: ‘Correlation is not causation’ does not mean ‘correlation tells us nothing about causation.’
decremental 1 days ago [-]
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pbodyvstheworld 1 days ago [-]
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be8e9dmrro 24 hours ago [-]
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pjc50 22 hours ago [-]
Of course it's illegal, as always with the drug war the problem is finding people who sell it.
(And with Apple’s new CEO, the early signs are that commitment is headed for the ash heap as well, but it seems the Mafia may have a longer horizon)
I don't think these very different drugs should be compared equivocally.
And while both drugs have the possibility of abuse; most issues stem from legality - not the chemical effects.
Maybe that will help some people see how ridiculous it is to generalise like that.
Alcohol has greater negative side effects than pot, and nicotine is more addictive than cocaine or pot. I’m not sure what you mean by “exotic modern stuff,” but if it includes hallucinogens (what people usually mean by modern/exotic drugs) then they’re not really addictive at all.
I ask because the scale reads more like a morality scale than anything based on actual negative effects, either in the individual or society.
citation needed
>It made me feel like a new man. The problem was, the first thing the new man wanted was more cocaine. ---George Carlin
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/04/us/cannabis-marijuana-ris...
https://bigfatgenius.com/2220%20Fall%202010/Nutt%20King%20Ph...
Cocaine (in crack form) was found to be the third most harmful recreational drug overall, after alcohol and heroin. It also caused the most direct harm to users out of all drugs. Cannabis, not so much, mid-table. Non-crack cocaine was somewhere between the two.
Note that this study is now over 15 years old.
The Mafia kills people directly. That's a sudden-death right there.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39mr81j2j1o
For starters: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomorrah_(film) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o44Zv4DY64
That's not what the Mafia is. It's an origin story. Was would be more accurate.
He’s been CEO less than a month and everything that’s happening right now has been in the works for multiple years….
Both these make Apple worse.
The idea appears to be to sell the devices as a vehicle for showing ads (incremental ARR) over selling them for their intrinsic customer value. You expect this kind of thing from shitty industries like cars or Google or Facebook. But this used to be an explicit “no go” for Apple.
There’s zero indication Ternus is onboard with that - Cue yes, but Ternus was not CEO when any of the stuff that is happening now was being developed
Poor decision making exists everywhere. Size of a company is absolutely no insurance against it. See Tesla for a specific example.
Everything is then run by excel people with metrics. Innovation dies, product suffers and company spirals downward.
Convince shareholders that it's been leaving money on the table.
Apple Silicon was the exception, that was truly transformative. But other things, like how polished and snappy the OS feels, seems to have been getting steadily worse.
This puts them at existential risk of disruption, because it will build huge unseen pressure for customers to flee.
We saw this with Opus 4.7 - 5, losing folks to Sol when it came out. But Anthropic delivered with 5.5
So, if you’re in the business of selling the somewhat healthier product, and one supplier starts to supply the otherwise superior product, that’s not good for business, either. You will lose customers.
Now, do you accept that, saying “I won’t sell that”, do you fight to outlaw the product (will be hard given at you’re not selling healthy products, either), do you fight the suppliers of the new product (a gang war) or do you add the product to your inventory?
There often isn’t a clear choice; each option has its pros and cons.
Increasing the potency of some drug with fentanyl is an interesting choice, because by the time the user *knows* how strong it is, there's some likelihood they're already dead.
Its lethal dose is a lot smaller than that of heroin, but it isn’t guaranteed to kill. If it were, why is it used so much in medicine?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl: “Fentanyl is a highly potent synthetic opioid of the piperidine family, used primarily as pain medication
[…]
In 2015, 1,600 kilograms (3,500 pounds) were used in healthcare globally.
It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines.”
The issue with potency is that the more potent a substance, the more precise equipment and quality control you need to stay on the safe side. With fentanyl, healthcare and pharmaceutical industry can handle the precision and QC demands (which includes guarantees and maintaining public trust). Criminal enterprises cannot.
Micrograms (yes still many molecules) could be lethal
I don’t take fentanyl but I regularly take signaling peptides where the doses are typically in the mcg range and still rather potent - though with signaling peptides the response curve typically flattens out so bigger doses don’t necessarily mean stronger effects - they can be saturated. Depends on what you’re signaling though.
I had correctly predicted my hypersensitivity to semaglutide (ozempic) so started using it for treating autoimmune issues at a dose of 25mcg and I still ended up with temporary gastroparesis.
See these:
- The influence of PRNP polymorphisms on human prion disease susceptibility: an update [1]
- A naturally occurring variant of the human prion protein completely prevents prion disease | Nature [2]
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26022925/
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14510?utm_source=chatg...
for kids?
That a dose not too different from adult posology of paracetamol can be lethal?
Maybe you did not know that "heroin" was developed at Bayer (the informal name came out of the trials after the reports from the testers)...
Pharmacology is the discipline that deals with drugs.
Everytime you deal with nominal professionals you should be concerned, because their professional ability is not granted. People who deal with bodies deal with an immensely complex and subtle mechanism: they do not know it as well as needed, and their regard is easily not too different from that of Robert Liston in their evaluation of compromises - your due diligence does realistically involve verifying that values are aligned (otherwise they may decide that they can sacrifice something that for you is critically vital).
> I am not sure why it was being downvoted
Neither do I - I did not. (I did take the implied into account.)
> snark
Good: since we are here, can you kindly explain what "snark" is, because I find the term in the guidelines, I have no idea how to interpret it, I asked it a few times and I got downvoted for the question?
The reason synthetic opioids like fentanyl are used is because they actually have less side effects. Opioids can cause a histamine response, digestive issues and constipation. Newer synthetic and hybrid opioids cause that less, so they’re preferred in hospital settings.
There’s essentially no long term risk with the small doses required during surgery. The main risk is, of course, acute respiratory depression, which kills you. This is how opioid overdoses happen. This doesn’t happen under GA because the dose is tightly controlled, and your airway is supported anyway; you’re intubated.
This is why DARE failed. You can't blatantly lie about everything just because you want what's best for people. At some point people find out you're a liar and don't believe a thing you say.
Fentanyl may in some cases kill you the first time you're exposed to it.
The way you state it, there are zero fentanyl addicts in the world today.
There were signs warning of this and if I remember correctly, they murdered two major fentanyl cooks, put their bodies on the side of a road, along with a warning sign and two huge piles of the drug around the bodies.
Accelerations in the different directions of bounded incentives create as-if Brownian motions, - not the stability towards optimality of a perfect organic model.
Or: what you write is rational, but people are easily not... The supply side should disappear from the market when irrational, but changes are slow..
Herbert Simon - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/ita/ita...
And the curve is the same across almost all the world. Italy is 1.3, you need 2.1 to even tread water and keep the population you have. Who buys the stocks and fentanyl when each year you have less and less buyers?
(It follows straight from the general population decrease.)
Sure, they're OK with some heroin addicts. I'm suggesting they drew a line in the sand.
Curiously, this is still relevant to my comment nearby about "slow effect models" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49842956 ).
70% of food in the supermarket is ultra processed. But as long as people make it to 65 years old they are still good customers. That is still 50 years of sales.
Yes. And 70% of Earth atmosphere is nitrogen.
The two figures have about the same relevance to health.
Tobacco is incredibly damaging but because it doesn't kill you right away we tolerate it.
There's probably a rather grim metric that defines time to death ratio for addictive substances somewhere in a government report.
When you grow up in a society and see results of gambling, tabacco, alcohol and drug addictions around you that usually deter you from a getting into it. It does not deter everyone, but society actually sees the consequences.
Same with junk food and obesity - when you have people in your family struggle with weight, diabetis and tons of related health issues that's give you more healthy outlook on life.
This is why drugs that kill people fast are so dangerous - because you dont see addicts around you who sttugle to find meaning in life for years because heroine burned their brain. People just start to use and die, fast.
It's not even just about food or drugs. This is how Russia wage a war for 5 years with 400,000 people dead via mercenary army. Society dont see the scale of war because almost no one returns so people keep selling their life for $50,000 thinking its a good way to make money or get rid of debts.
> There's dozens of us!
~~ Arrested Development (the "Never Nude" syndrome)
them's fighting words
Saskatchewan is SK and Manitoba is MB if you want weird
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_and_territories_of_C...
Who these days are more a front org for the CCP/triads who seem to be running much of the criminal underworld in Canada with their network of smuggling and money laundering.
My theory is that the CCP/triads leveraged drug addiction within the HA and killed anyone that objected, and everyone else got rich...
Ontario is different, East Coast is different, prairies are different and the West Coast is it's own beast.
HA uses puppet gangs, so while their power may be diminished, they are still lurking in the background, as key nodes for drugs, money and guns.
The power lost by the HA and traditional mafia has largely been taken over by CCP/triads groups. The Indian and Iranian OC are under the Chinese, who have deep into the government and economy as major developers. Read Sam Cooper.
Can’t be, right?
There isn't anything to measure if the poop is unable to leave the end-user.
Either way, the constipation would affect different users at different times, so I don't think it would matter to the data. In other words, your idea stinks ;)
The government can’t regulate a black market.
Or, just keep doing what they're doing. It's bound to work eventually, right? Drug cartels are definitely growing less powerful every year, the war of drugs is being won, rate of addiction is going down.
Or perhaps selling it directly?
Has this ever worked? Do you have any evidence whatsoever that this is a good idea?
Western democracies haven’t really prioritized “war on drugs” (for lack of a better term) over the last probably 10ish years. Yeah there’s still funding and initiatives and some lip service.
Instead the focus has been largely infighting and major political factions fighting for political power in the next generation (“tech bros” political class for one)
So it’s no surprise state-sponsored (and just demand driven) drug trafficking into the US hasn’t received much action.
There is some hope though. With rare earth mineral access being a major national security priority, and many cartels controlling those areas in SA, the converging interests may produce some net positive. Background: https://youtu.be/q_n-74ifBZs?is=nw5g-mmPmKphGH2W
The Mafia keeping fentanyl out isn't a public service. It's a cartel protecting its own drug market, which says nothing about whether democratic states ( globally ) are failing their citizens.
It's complete fantasy that the mafia didn't deal hard drugs.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/the-pizza-connection-35th-a...
Orson Welles said it best:
"'The Godfather' was the glorification of a bunch of bums who never existed."
But it is organized, and there's not that much fundamental difference between corporations and criminal enterprises, not in the ways they are run. The details boil down to different trade-offs taken wrt. risk vs. reward related to staying on the good side of the law. A lot of the violence (particularly the "principled"-looking one) seems to stem from the fact that a criminal org needs to built its own layer of coordination and enforcement, since by definition it cannot rely on public services of law enforcement and the legal system.
If they can kill with impunity they can certainly do the same with drugs.
Large-scale crack cocaine gangs existed too with substantial levels of organization but they still sell crack.
They're mostly unintelligent thugs motivated by greed. And I think the "Why would they kill their own customers?" implies they think that far ahead. Which is probably true as well for most major corps. They'll take short term profit over quite literally anything.
\- Alan Greenspan
https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2009/03/30/...
You go to the hospital, you get the medications you need (and no more) for as long as you need them, and then you stop (or you deal with chronic conditions under medical control).
When AI can write screenplays like this one, then it's game over.
Wielding power to benefit the ordinary people, long-term, is an age-old sign that those wielding the power have and/or aspire to some level of long-term legitimacy and popular support. Doesn't matter if you're looking at early Chinese dynasties, Old Testament kings, or modern authoritarian states banning non-government organizations.
The movie was well-planned by Francis - but the mafia is a mass-murder organisation, without exception. Japan finally got the better of Yakuza for the most part (it is nowhere near as powerful as it was once); Italy still struggles, in particular with regards to Ndrangheta. So any article that attempts to white-wash the mafia in Italy - nope, sorry, not even good movies such as the godfather should disguise the mass-murder organisation. See how they bombed Giovanni Falcone to death, let's not forget that; and more recently how Ndrangheta executed women (2026; see https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39mr81j2j1o) who stopped being silent about the genocidal activities of Ndrangheta. Let's put it short: the mafia needs to be eliminated completely. It's not easy since they infiltrated so much in Italy and in parts elsewhere (just study how Capone in the USA got big, then you realise that the USA has an even bigger problem here - plus, fentanyl too), but it has to be done. There is no alternative unless you want organisations to undermine the state and continue its genocidal tendencies. You can be sure they are also involved in smuggling weapons, thus contributing to genocide outside of Italy directly as well.
Please no more white-washing articles of the mafia as glorious heroes "because they keep fentanyl out of Italy". (Besides, this is not even correct to begin with; fentanyal at the least right now, plays a very small role in Europe at best; in the USA this is different. See how Trump tries to blame Canadians for Fentanyl, smuggled via eggs, which is another one of his non-stop lies about Canadians.)
It's a strong antidote to those romanticizing crime.
In US it should be available on HBO Max.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomorrah_(TV_series)
The first two seasons are great, watch it with subtitles (fun fact: in Italy it was also shown in tv with subs because most people cannot understand neapolitan dialect).
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/the-pizza-connection-35th-a...
> 'The Godfather' was the glorification of a bunch of bums who never existed.
— Orson Welles
Thus, no surprise that it shows up elsewhere.
The black market is very inconsistent with what it provides, (because it is unregulated,) thus "heroin" may have fentanyl in it; or may not even be available. (Because it's easier to smuggle fentanyl.)
Does lithuania not have methadone or prescribable diamorphine? They should reconsider if not, not everyone is going to make it sober, much cheaper and better outcomes to being pragmatic about it.
selling “oxycodone”? maybe don’t bother acquiring oxycodone at all—press fentanyl into a convincing little blue pill and sell that instead.
selling “adderall”? methamphetamine is cheaper. counterfeit xanax? who knows what benzo is actually in it.
customer might not find out. customer might not even live.
mafia seems delightfully old school about this. they know business. this is bad business.
This is an "American" thing because fent primarily comes from Mexican cartels (Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation).
They buy precursors from China, they produce it in labs in Mexico, and then smuggle it into America where they kill 50,000 to 70,000 Americans per year.
Not getting political here -- but what would you think if organized crime in a neighboring country was murdering 50,000 to 70,000 of your countrymen per year?
- While drugs laced with fentanyl are also a problem, lots of people _do_ knowingly consume fentanyl. In fact, it has replaced Heroin in the US 'market', for example. It is also a contaminant in other drugs (cocaine, meth), due to how easy it is for fentanyl to stay in crevices, etc. It is also 'snuck in' to counterfeit pills, which is the only aspect you mention.
- The traffickers physically moving fentanyl into the country are overwhelmingly Americans. Pre 2019 traffickers used to get this straight from China, but stricter controls in China have shifted things to be staged in Mexico instead.
- The demand and traffickers are still largely American, and it is a "symbiotic" problem. US drug demand is empowering Mexican cartels and making everyday Mexicans less safe (the cartels also get most of their guns from the US). At the same time, powerful Mexican cartels mean it is much easier to "stage" fentanyl in Mexico then import it into the US than the older model of importing it directly from China.
Drug dealers will lace "normal" drugs with fentanyl. It gives a "different buzz". The customer knows they are buying "normal" drugs, and there is no quality control, so lacing happens. If the dealer messes up how much they lace, it is easy to add too much (because a small amount t of fentanyl goes a long way), and your customer ODs.
Those people were doing a line of coke, they had no idea they were about to overdose on an opioid.
Well, that depends on the legal definition of murder where you live.
In lots of places, intent matters. You said the pill was added with the intent to make more money. If there was no intent to kill, then in lots of places that isn't murder but might be some other kind of criminal homicide.
For example, people at Ford made the decision to sell the Pinto with a dangerous defect to make more money and people died as a direct consequence of that product decision. The people who made that decision were not charged with murder (or anything as far as I recall).
Also I think they charged people in the ford pinto case with reckless homicide but they got off.
If you want to find where to point the finger to, the systems that let prescription opiates be prescribed with such reckless abandon is a good superficial target. Getting political here - if you want to find the very root cause of all this, I would present the institutions that prevent the implementation or otherwise erode preexisting social safety-nets as the culpable party.
No, the pain pill debacle of the early aughts actually led to heroin usage.
What caused the rise of fentanyl was the US getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan and the Taliban (or whoever took over) burning the poppy fields.
https://youtu.be/925wmb-4Yr4
As much as 20% of Americans use these recreational drugs. Europeans on average use recreational drugs like half as much as Americans, maybe 10% use them.
ok so you are just spreading FUD
The only reason they’re selling it is because people are buying it.
It’s an American problem.
I'd blame myself for giving them that market, and then I'd start pushing hard for a drug policy that actually makes sense, as opposed trying to continue a policy of drug prohibition which has spent the last 100+ years [0] completely failing to do anything but give money to criminals whilst having almost no effect on actual drug consumption.
The government's job is to protect its taxpayers. If the taxpayers have a demand for drugs, which is clearly the case with the US, then the government should stop cosplaying a pearl-clutching 19th-century Victorian housewife and start regulating the drug trade properly, the way it does with alcohol and cigarettes.
Will this solve all problems? No. So long there is misery in the world, there will be people trying to escape that misery.
But at least American opiate addicts will have fewer overdoses, and therefore hopefully contribute more to tax revenue.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_Stat...
And don't get me started on how public health interventions in general seem to end up treated as moral hazards or wasteful in the US, even when they're _saving_ money...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/01/milo-yiannop...
> take any action
Action must be surgical. Even with mosquitoes - with humans, you figure.
I am shocked at how you can suppose you can propose zero quality like that here.
These comments are oddly common, but I've never understood the value of simply repeating the definition of uncertainty words like "may." Who is being informed here?
I am being informed about the public opinion. Which I value more than articles. (Don't come me at with AI, I'm well aware that it makes all human communication bad and pointless in theory and more and more in practice, thx.)
Analysts work speculatively. And the results of the speculation are not trivial when supported by strong elements.
I thought about it. And it's very stupid to imagine uncertainty should be off limits. I hope that isn't what you meant.
I prefer error bars be worn on the sleeve, so I find "may" on display to be refreshing, not dismaying. YMMV
What's your alternate explanation to explain the absence of fentanyl in Italy, and how can my country get so weirdly randomly lucky?
For this reason, "may" in a press article, doesn't carry the same meaning regarding uncertainty than "may" in common language. Which is why I disagree with your comment:
> I've never understood the value of simply repeating the definition of uncertainty words like "may."
In the contrary, I think it is worth reminding people what may actually means here.
Now, I agree with what you and others have said about the usefulness of discussing uncertain claims, and I don't think there is a real disagreement here.
edit: What do you think other people think that may means
Not any speculation but educated guesses from knowledgeable people.