The problem is worse, much much worse, than he makes it sound.
Heroin was the problem, but people could use it for decades and still survive. The problem today is Fentanyl and its analogs. They are *factors* stronger than heroin, and can kill in some cases with just micrograms.
An Equianalgesic table shows the relative strength of pain relieving drugs. Its baseline, rated at “1”, is pure morphine. So drugs are either rated as fractions of 1, or multiples of 1. This is a very useful link to have as a reference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equianalgesic
Fentanyl, the strongest opioid legal in the US, and then only in patch form, is 50-100 times stronger than *pure morphine*. Its equivalent dose to pure morphine is just
100 µg (100 micrograms), a thousandth of a milligram.
One of Fentanyl’s analogs, chemically similar to it, is Carfentanil. It is 10,000-100,000 times stronger than *pure morphine*.
Pure heroin is just 4-5 times stronger than pure morphine.
Until recently, when China finally outlawed it, there were thousands of clandestine labs producing very inexpensive Fentanyl and its analogs. And entire *kilogram* of Carfentanil cost around $1,250 (US).
One smuggler was arrested in Canada with a kilogram of it, and another in Florida with 4 kilograms of it.
The RCMP says that about 20µg, twenty micrograms, is about enough to overdose a person.
This means that there is enough Carfentanil in a kilogram to overdose 50,000,000 people. Enough to kill every person in:
New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA Metropolitan Statistical Area, and
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, and
Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI Metropolitan Statistical Area, and
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Which means that Carfentanil is a nuclear weapons class weapon of mass destruction, in the megatons range.
My doctor prescribed Fentanyl patches for me because my insurance company unilaterally decided to quit covering my safer Butrans patches. He said it has been common for many insurance carriers to remove the safer pain killers from their formulary, including Medicare.
There is plenty of blame to go around for our current opioid epidemic.
Interesting chart. Looks like some of that stuff should never have been invented.
Just.. WOW!
Makes Ricin look like breakfast topping.