People often get basic psychological questions backwards. Why do people take drugs? Not a mystery. It’s why they don’t take them all the time that’s the mystery.
— Jordan Peterson (2018)
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In November 2022, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) issued a public safety alert that drug traffickers have begun mixing fentanyl with xylazine. This is a problem because xylazine is not an opioid, so that naloxone, which is an opioid antagonist designed to rapidly reverse an opioid overdose, does not reverse the effects of xylazine.
This problem manifests on the streets when a person overdoses on illicit narcotics and must be revived. Because naloxone is not effective against xylazine, an overdose of a combination of xylazine and fentanyl or other opioid is much more difficult to treat. This problem appears to have resulted in an increase in the already alarming number of drug overdose deaths.
The question is whether these deaths are intended, and if so, who is responsible.
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For those who don’t know opium is the dried latex obtained from the seed capsules of the opium poppy.
This latex is about twelve percent morphine. The morphine can be extracted. When the morphine is extracted, it can be converted into heroin, which is twice as strong as the morphine.
Opium gives users a euphoric rush. This is followed by relaxation and the relief from physical pain. Unfortunately, besides wasting a lot of time and causing many other health and safety issues, and possible problems with the police, it also tends to create physical and psychological dependence.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid drug. It was first developed in 1959, and is typically used to treat patients with chronic severe pain or severe pain following surgery. It is about fifty times stronger than heroin. Depending on a person’s body size and drug tolerance, a mere two milligrams of fentanyl is a lethal dose.
According to the DEA, illicit fentanyl, fentanyl analogues, and their immediate precursors, are mostly produced in China. From China, these substances are shipped through mail carriers directly to the United States or alternatively to criminal organizations in Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean. Upon arrival, fentanyl or its analogues are mixed into the American heroin supply, or pressed into a pill form, and then distributed on the black market, where demand for heroin and prescription opioids, a/k/a “hillbilly heroin,” is at an epidemic level.
The DEA reports that counterfeit fentanyl pills typically contain between .02 to 5.1 milligrams of fentanyl per tablet. These pills are a significant component in the dramatic increase of overdose deaths over the past several years.
Xylazine is a non-opioid veterinary tranquilizer which is not approved by the FDA for human use. It is very cheap. A kilogram of xylazine powder can be purchased online from Chinese suppliers for about $20.00. It is used to increase the profit from illegal drug sales by mixing it with more expensive heroin or fentanyl. In addition, because it has a longer-lasting effect than fentanyl alone, some users desire that it be mixed in.
Aside from increasing the risk of overdose and death, some people who use xylazine regularly develop soft tissue injuries, including skin ulcers, abscesses, and necrotic tissue. In the worst cases, amputation is required.
Finally, as noted, naloxone, which is labeled as “Narcan,” is an opioid antagonist. It is used to reverse an opioid overdose. It works by attaching to opioid receptors and reversing and blocking the effects of opioids. Naloxone can quickly restore normal breathing to a person whose breathing has slowed or stopped because of an opioid overdose.
Unfortunately, naloxone is not effective against xylazine, so that it will be less effective, if effective at all, against an overdose from a mixture of an opioid such as fentanyl and xylazine. Hence the cause for concern.
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Given that China is the primary black market source not just for fentanyl and its precursors, but also for xylazine, and given that the economic competition between the West and China is fierce, if not warlike, it is fair and prudent to consider whether or not the xylazine supply is a chemical attack on the United States. On this question, we should consider both the nature of the matter, and also whether the supply may be part of an attempt at revenge for perceived past transgressions.
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“The Opium Wars” between the British and the Chinese is a catchy name for what was at its base, a trade dispute involving access to sea ports and the exchange of payments. More particularly, by about 1800, the trade in Chinese goods, such as tea, silk, and porcelain was very lucrative for the British. However, the Chinese were not interested in purchasing any British goods in exchange. Because the Chinese demanded payment in silver, the trade imbalance resulted in a great deal of silver being moved from Britain to China.
To mitigate this, the East India Company, among other British merchants, began to smuggle Indian opium into China. They too demanded payment in silver. By about 1839, the opium trade was large enough to pay for the tea trade, which had grown from two pounds in 1660 to thirty million pounds in 1830.
The opium trade also either “supplied” or “created” millions of addicts, depending upon the answer to the inscrutable problem whether demand creates the supply, or supply creates the demand. Indeed, some scholars argue that like the United States in the 2010’s and 2020’s, the 1820’s and 1830’s were a time of such social unrest and rebellious disturbance in China, that it was the normal response to the conditions for many people to use substances like opium to alleviate the associated stress.
In either event, to try to get control over the situation, the emperor ordered the seizure and destruction of a large quantity of opium owned by the British. This, along with other issues, sparked outrage and then military conflict.
The British easily won the war. They had vastly superior military tactics and technology. This victory forced the emperor into important financial concessions. These concessions included deeding Hong Kong to Britain, and allowing the British traders access to and the use of five major sea ports instead of just the one at Canton.
Further, this was a humiliation for the emperor, and adversely affected his prestige. During that period, the emperor faced a number of other challenges as well, including famines, natural disasters, rapid population growth, and the corruption of government processes. Continued opium importation and use aggravated these political problems, which all came to a head with the Taiping Rebellion, in 1850. Coincident with this rebellion, or civil war, the Chinese government continued to agitate with the British and other foreign traders over economic issues, to the point that open military hostilities resumed in 1856.
The French joined the British in what is known as the “Second Opium War.” This, like the first military conflict, was easily won by the British, who extracted more financial concessions from the Chinese.
Opium addiction remained a problem in China during the subsequent decades, such that by 1906, China produced eighty-five percent of the world’s opium supply, and more than twenty-five percent of adult Chinese men were regular users.
After the Communists took power in 1949, they eradicated the poppy fields, closed the opium processing plants and opium dens, and jailed or executed traffickers. Within three years, they declared China to be drug-free. (The truth is, obviously, subject to further verification.)
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Surely, the Chinese remember this chapter in their history. But it is less likely that they would be seeking revenge upon the West, and United States in particular, than that they would have learned lessons from how their markets were exploited by foreigners to gain valuable financial concessions. Further, it is not very likely that any business, including international trafficking in controlled substances, is conducted in China wholly free of the participation of the government. They are, after all, communists.
Thus, I surmise that the Chinese government is probably involved in the hillbilly heroin problem in America, and perhaps actively, but that the primary motive is probably the profits involved, as well as the potential for future, and more significant economic advantage. The social harms created, in whole, or in part, such as, the decaying of the American spirit, the breakup of families and destruction of businesses, and even the deaths of those in so much despair that fentanyl seems the best solution to a problem, are merely ancillary trophies for, rather than the objective of, a malicious and malignant autocracy which must constantly reassure itself of its own legitimacy.
This is the work of Satan.