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314 pages, Hardcover
First published April 6, 2021
Sometimes there is not enough love in the world to beat this. Heroin was simply too strong for my son.This is a quote from the book. My bf, the parents of almost all the deceased people, victims of an often fatal illness, would say that.
The economics behind it are stunning. You can buy an industrial pill press along with some pill dies on the internet for a couple thousand dollars. A kilogram of pure fentanyl costs four thousand dollars. Add a couple hundred dollars for cutting agents like baby formula, and you are in business. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, a kilogram of fentanyl broken down into a milligram per pill would yield one million counterfeit pills. At a street cost of twenty dollars per pill, an investment of several thousand dollars can generate up to twenty million dollars in profit.Fentanyl, an incredibly strong drug with which heroin is often adulterated in varying and possibly fatal amounts, is the cause of many deaths. But false information doesn't help. The 'war against drugs' has descended to the lows of Nancy Reagan and her stupid, 'just say no' campaign. Fentanyl is an extremely effective strong painkiller and is used daily as a prescription patch, pill, nasal spray at home or (in hospitals) injection.
In 2016 the DEA releases a two-minute video, Fentanyl: A Real Threat to Law Enforcement.1 Jack Riley, the deputy administrator, opens the video by stating that “a very small amount [of fentanyl] ingested or absorbed through your skin can kill you.”The author says, "What they are describing doesn’t sound like an opioid overdose. People who use heroin describe it as the most wonderful feeling they have ever experienced. They feel euphoria." He said it sounded like they were having an anxiety attack! A year later, to add to this fake news, the DEA update the video to say that being in contact with Fentanyl, even a few grains of sand, can kill you. And advises all sorts of PPE and room searches before.... helping a victim who might be lying there needing CPR to hang on to life. Drug use should not be treated as a criminal offence but as a public health issue. As is tobacco and alcohol.
He introduces two police detectives who describe their experience with a fentanyl exposure. One detective describes how, in sealing a baggie of the drug, some of it “poofed up” into the air, and the detectives ended up inhaling it. “I felt like my body was shutting down,” the other detective says. “People around me say I looked really white and lost color. And it just really felt like … I thought that was it. I thought I was dying. That’s what my body felt like. If I could imagine or describe a feeling where your body is completely shutting down, and, you know, preparing to stop, stop living, you know, that’s the feeling I felt.”
The first detective adds, “You actually felt like you were dying. You couldn’t breathe, very disoriented. Everything you did was exaggerated in your mind, I guess. It was the most bizarre feeling that I never ever would want to feel again. And it was just a little bit of powder that just puffed up in the air.” Riley concludes, “Fentanyl can kill you.:
Author Peter Canning is a paramedic who has witnessed firsthand the rise and fall of opioids in the 2000s and the resulting havoc this has wreaked on American society.
Canning writes principally about the homeless population that he serves in Hartford, Connecticut. The author’s stated purpose in sharing what he has learned is the desire to keep addicts alive until they are finally ready to quit. Canning’s ideas are all aimed at helping addicts survive accidental overdoses at a time when heroin and other injectable drugs are almost inevitable cut with ever more dangerous adulterants (including fentanyl and carfentanil) which can kill an unsuspecting addict graveyard dead - if the dealer’s added adulterants are not perfectly distributed into the powdery mix.
Canning’s suggestions to keep IV drug-using addicts alive include “safe injection sites aka harm reduction centers,” which refers to sites where addicts can come indoors without the fear of arrest and prosecution to find a measure of privacy while they inject themselves with drugs that they purchased off site. “Safe injection sites” have personnel on location to provide clean injecting equipment (including a needle exchange), to be available to monitor the users to deal with overdoses by administering Narcan in the event of an overdose, to provide counseling when a user is receptive to rehab or treatment, and to provide testing (if requested by an addict) of street drugs by gas chromatography to analyze unknown drug samples for against dangerous contaminants, including fentanyl and carfentanil.
Why does Canning endorse “harm reduction centers” for addicts? Canning writes, “If we can stop chasing [users] into the shadows where they use alone and unsafely [to avoid arrest], we can end the deaths.” (The Killing Season, p. 265).
Canning’s approach seems particularly prescient regarding one particular portion of the population: recently-released prisoners. Canning cites a study from the New England Journal of Medicine which reveals that newly-released inmates are 129 times more likely to die of an accidental opioid overdose during the first two weeks of freedom than were members of the general population when matched for age/sex/race. (The Killing Season, p. 190).
Why are released inmates so much more likely to die of an overdose? Canning names an obvious reason for this: Most jails decline to provide maintenance opioids to inmates who are addicted to opioids at the time they are incarcerated, thus dooming the inmates to the misery of a “cold turkey” withdrawal alone, in the jailhouse, and unassisted by medicine. After going through forced withdrawal and then spending a chunk of time in jail as they serve their sentences, the inmates when newly released have lost the physical tolerance to their drugs of choice that they had built up before they went to jail. This means that addicts’ bodies are much more sensitive to these potent drugs upon release than they were the last time the addicts used, and this makes the addicts much more likely to overdose - 129 times more likely to die of an overdose, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. (The Killing Season, p.191).
How awful. Peter Canning is absolutely right in his approach.
My rating: 7.25/10, finished 8/5/23 (3839).