Correction: Hundreds of thousands of Americans chose to poison themselves with drugs that they know can make them extremely addicted, hurt them and possibly kill them. Chapo's sons (and other Mexican and international cartels) didn't force Americans to do anything, the Americans did their own thing freely in most cases, and continue to do so despite wall-to-wall news screaming about the dangers of the fentanyl epidemic. It's hardly secret information that the stuff's available and sometimes even added to other drugs.
In my social circle. Everybody who uses drugs, uses them recreationally. I personally do not partake in this.
Now there's a philosophical question about free will. I won't go into that as I don't think people have free will as the term is commonly understood.
But plenty of people use drugs with full knowledge of its effects. Whether this leads to their demise depends on their ability to self-regulate and optionally support networks.
But the reality is that the truth is somewhere in the middle. There are oppressed people and there are people pursuing self-gratification, and there are people who are in the overlap. So there's no one size fits all.
If everyone you know played Russian roulette, well, that is a stupid game to play, even if nobody you know landed on the chamber with the bullet in it.
"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes" as the saying goes.
Your logic is very flawed.
Let's assume for example that a criminal gang places hand grenades in kindergartens across America, and many children die as a result of playing with them, is it the children's fault?
You might say no, because children don't really know the dangers involved with explosives, but here's another example.
But let's say a criminal gang places tens of thousands hand guns in colleges across America. Students do know what guns are. In this scenario, I predict mass shootings will increase by a crazy amount, as well as suicides, etc.
Would you really blame the students? Sure, some of the blame rests on each person who picked up the gun, but THE MAJORITY of the blame goes to the person who enabled this.
I hope this example changes your view, because it's so strange you act as an apologist for a ruthless criminal gang, and is unwilling to admit that there's a larger picture.
First of all the opioid crisis started because of a pharmaceutical company illegal practices, lying, bribing of doctors and scientists, over prescription to people who didn't need those drugs.
Even today you might end up addicted to opiates because of medications after a serious injury/surgery.
Second of all, cutting a dangerous drug, with a drug that can kill you with 3 milligram is borderline mass murder.
Third of all "and sometimes even added to other drugs.", it's systematically added to other drugs, there is no addict dumb enough to buy like pure fentanyl for themselves, that's not drugging yourself that's suicide.
It's funny how differences of interpretation, either of which can be subjective in certain ways, are now suddenly labeled as "spreading misinformation". Debate if you like, but I recommend you don't use that idiotic phrase when your own arguments are also debatable.
The original opioid crisis with Oxycontin started in 1995, long before the modern problems with fentanyl. There could definitely be some connections between the two, but that's a stretched argument. What we're seeing today is a problem that involves different issues, different reasons for consumption and different causes.
The vast majority of the fentanyl overdose deaths happening now have nothing to do with people being addicted to prescribed medications after serious surgery. They're part of a separate demographic and social dynamic, so don't use the first thing and its necessities involving surgery and etc as an argument about today's opioid problems.
With that said, and this is my response to other comments here: yes, people have some aspect of free will. They're not blind puppets. With all the screaming headlines and WIDELY, freely available information about the dangers of fentanyl and how often it gets cut into many other recreational drugs, millions of Americans who consume drugs because of non-medical addiction or for recreational reasons have no shortage of means for knowing the risk they're taking.
Should they nonetheless receive help? of course. I'm not arguing against that at all, but I am arguing that squaring the blame on outsiders is politically dishonest, and generally not fully true. The cartels supply and they do so knowing that they want as many addicted people as possible. I make no apologies for them because they're disgusting in so many ways, but they're not just some simplistic case of "cartel poisons America", as if they were people secretly dumping cyanide into a water reservoir that everyone has to use. Instead, I repeat, it's "Americans are poisoning themselves for many pointless reasons of voluntarily chosen consumption of substances which aren't necessary for living, that could easily be avoided regardless of one's socioeconomic class.
Nothing about being poor and living in a ghetto obligates a person to make their life even worse by spending more of their scarce resources on recreational drugs that might be cut with fentanyl. This reductionist victim view of so many people reaches absurd levels with such an argument.
Finally, the whole argument about the cartels poisoning America is convenient for politicians, because on the one hand it lets them pursue a renewed justification for the monstrous drug war that has been failing for decades, and on the other hand, lets them maintain that push without directly blaming Americans for their own choices. It neatly fits the same tired narrative used for decades by "tough on drugs" politicians about stopping the nefarious activities of evil criminal foreigners, and all the attending militarization, civil liberties reductions and overseas interventions that come as part of this ugly package.
Do these criminal groups present a threat? sure, but is a renewed drug war going to be an effective answer to it while hundreds of thousands of Americans consume substances that nobody coerces them into consuming? No, fuck no. After 50 years of drug war idiocy that much should be obvious enough.
Lots of comments here trying to place blame on a single party. Can't we agree that it's complicated and that everyone involved is responsible for the circumstances.
I think if you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics.
Personal responsibility plays probably 80% of it, and that really points to the company one chooses to keep.
When one keeps drug addicts or drug-friendly people as friends, that is the worst possible decision that one can make, of all decisions in life. It is all of our personal responsibility to to associate with "good" people - and cut out people that must be avoided. If one avoids the drug-friendly, then the odds go way down that one will take drugs. If drugs are not easily available, then the tempation goes way down if they are never around you. As an example, I personally have no idea as to where to get drugs. Who has them? Where would I go? Why would I make some special trip driving around everywhere trying to find drugs - spend hours and hours, maybe never finding them? And one might hang out with friends, and not take drugs as they pass them around, BUT, all it takes is one moment of weakness, and boom, there goes another life flushed down the toilet - notwithstanding the whole "exception argument" drug users give: "Yes, but I am functional" argument - that one works and takes drugs. Heard that one a million times and good for you, but that doesn't apply to most, which is what the point is.
I've known a couple of people who told me that they tried drugs, and I immediately cut them out of my life. I wasn't a dick when I happened to see them around town, but I certainy was not hanging out - just polite, then said that "I had to be somewhere else."
How many times have I heard someone say, "These are my friends, I'm not that shallow that I am going to turn my back on them." Foolish thing to say.
The reality is, if you hang out with successful businesspeople, odds are you will become successful in business. If you hang out with artists, you'll have a greater chance of being an artist. If you hang out with scientists, you'll have a greater chance of being a scientist. If you hang out with drug users, odds are exceptionally great that you will become a drug user.
The company one keeps. You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Personal responsibility is to chose one's friends wisely.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 41.6 ms ] threadNow there's a philosophical question about free will. I won't go into that as I don't think people have free will as the term is commonly understood.
But plenty of people use drugs with full knowledge of its effects. Whether this leads to their demise depends on their ability to self-regulate and optionally support networks.
But the reality is that the truth is somewhere in the middle. There are oppressed people and there are people pursuing self-gratification, and there are people who are in the overlap. So there's no one size fits all.
If everyone you know played Russian roulette, well, that is a stupid game to play, even if nobody you know landed on the chamber with the bullet in it.
"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes" as the saying goes.
But let's say a criminal gang places tens of thousands hand guns in colleges across America. Students do know what guns are. In this scenario, I predict mass shootings will increase by a crazy amount, as well as suicides, etc.
Would you really blame the students? Sure, some of the blame rests on each person who picked up the gun, but THE MAJORITY of the blame goes to the person who enabled this.
I hope this example changes your view, because it's so strange you act as an apologist for a ruthless criminal gang, and is unwilling to admit that there's a larger picture.
Even today you might end up addicted to opiates because of medications after a serious injury/surgery.
Second of all, cutting a dangerous drug, with a drug that can kill you with 3 milligram is borderline mass murder.
Third of all "and sometimes even added to other drugs.", it's systematically added to other drugs, there is no addict dumb enough to buy like pure fentanyl for themselves, that's not drugging yourself that's suicide.
Stop spreading misinformation.
The original opioid crisis with Oxycontin started in 1995, long before the modern problems with fentanyl. There could definitely be some connections between the two, but that's a stretched argument. What we're seeing today is a problem that involves different issues, different reasons for consumption and different causes.
The vast majority of the fentanyl overdose deaths happening now have nothing to do with people being addicted to prescribed medications after serious surgery. They're part of a separate demographic and social dynamic, so don't use the first thing and its necessities involving surgery and etc as an argument about today's opioid problems.
With that said, and this is my response to other comments here: yes, people have some aspect of free will. They're not blind puppets. With all the screaming headlines and WIDELY, freely available information about the dangers of fentanyl and how often it gets cut into many other recreational drugs, millions of Americans who consume drugs because of non-medical addiction or for recreational reasons have no shortage of means for knowing the risk they're taking.
Should they nonetheless receive help? of course. I'm not arguing against that at all, but I am arguing that squaring the blame on outsiders is politically dishonest, and generally not fully true. The cartels supply and they do so knowing that they want as many addicted people as possible. I make no apologies for them because they're disgusting in so many ways, but they're not just some simplistic case of "cartel poisons America", as if they were people secretly dumping cyanide into a water reservoir that everyone has to use. Instead, I repeat, it's "Americans are poisoning themselves for many pointless reasons of voluntarily chosen consumption of substances which aren't necessary for living, that could easily be avoided regardless of one's socioeconomic class.
Nothing about being poor and living in a ghetto obligates a person to make their life even worse by spending more of their scarce resources on recreational drugs that might be cut with fentanyl. This reductionist victim view of so many people reaches absurd levels with such an argument.
Finally, the whole argument about the cartels poisoning America is convenient for politicians, because on the one hand it lets them pursue a renewed justification for the monstrous drug war that has been failing for decades, and on the other hand, lets them maintain that push without directly blaming Americans for their own choices. It neatly fits the same tired narrative used for decades by "tough on drugs" politicians about stopping the nefarious activities of evil criminal foreigners, and all the attending militarization, civil liberties reductions and overseas interventions that come as part of this ugly package.
Do these criminal groups present a threat? sure, but is a renewed drug war going to be an effective answer to it while hundreds of thousands of Americans consume substances that nobody coerces them into consuming? No, fuck no. After 50 years of drug war idiocy that much should be obvious enough.
When one keeps drug addicts or drug-friendly people as friends, that is the worst possible decision that one can make, of all decisions in life. It is all of our personal responsibility to to associate with "good" people - and cut out people that must be avoided. If one avoids the drug-friendly, then the odds go way down that one will take drugs. If drugs are not easily available, then the tempation goes way down if they are never around you. As an example, I personally have no idea as to where to get drugs. Who has them? Where would I go? Why would I make some special trip driving around everywhere trying to find drugs - spend hours and hours, maybe never finding them? And one might hang out with friends, and not take drugs as they pass them around, BUT, all it takes is one moment of weakness, and boom, there goes another life flushed down the toilet - notwithstanding the whole "exception argument" drug users give: "Yes, but I am functional" argument - that one works and takes drugs. Heard that one a million times and good for you, but that doesn't apply to most, which is what the point is.
I've known a couple of people who told me that they tried drugs, and I immediately cut them out of my life. I wasn't a dick when I happened to see them around town, but I certainy was not hanging out - just polite, then said that "I had to be somewhere else."
How many times have I heard someone say, "These are my friends, I'm not that shallow that I am going to turn my back on them." Foolish thing to say.
The reality is, if you hang out with successful businesspeople, odds are you will become successful in business. If you hang out with artists, you'll have a greater chance of being an artist. If you hang out with scientists, you'll have a greater chance of being a scientist. If you hang out with drug users, odds are exceptionally great that you will become a drug user.
The company one keeps. You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Personal responsibility is to chose one's friends wisely.