To a great extent, Narcan is the answer to fentanyl. It used to be that even people with a serious addiction could usually survive without overdosing and accidental overdoses weren't that common, but fentanyl is so potent and illegal drugs are so hard to dose, and fentanyl is now often a contaminant in other drugs. All of this leads to accidental fentanyl overdoses being very common.
That is to say, it's not so much that human nature is worse than it was 30 years ago, it's that the drug supply itself is more dangerous, which I think accounts for most of the increase in deaths they talk about. So we need a medical response to that.
To a great extent, Narcan is the answer to fentanyl. It used to be that even people with a serious addiction could usually survive without overdosing and accidental overdoses weren't that common, but fentanyl is so potent and illegal drugs are so hard to dose, and fentanyl is now often a contaminant in other drugs. All of this leads to accidental fentanyl overdoses being very common.
That is to say, it's not so much that human nature is worse than it was 30 years ago, it's that the drug supply itself is more dangerous, which I think accounts for most of the increase in deaths they talk about. So we need a medical response to that.