The Off Topic Topic

[Malthus]

Another thing which I think is a factor is that I believe that there's been a fundamental shift in the doctor-patient relationship, possibly at least partly because we rely way less on general practitioners and more on specialists nowadays.  I think the family doctors we went to 40 years ago knew us well enough as people that they would have noticed and cared if we were overusing painkillers.  I'm not sure that the doctors we go to now would notice--as long as we aren't complaining about pain, they figure we're OK on that front, but if we are complaining, they feel obligated to give us a prescription for it, instead of digging deeper or just telling us to take a couple of aspirin.

It's a good point. Here in Ontario at least care is often fragmented between various specialists, walk-in clinics, pain management clinics, and family doctors (if you can find one). "Continuity of care" necessary to pick up on systemic problems can be lost. 

[Iormlund]

5. Cheap opiates flood in, mainly from China (Fentanyl). Very potent and very easy to overdose with. Now addicts find opiates are cheaper than ever, but with a much increased risk of dropping dead if bought from a pusher. 

I thought Fentanyl had a very short-lived effect. Sounds great for recreational use but pretty bad for dealing with withdrawal.

I've had it a few times during procedures. For some reason I'm quite tolerant to it. So much one of the docs subtly asked if I was a junkie, when she saw the previous doses I had taken.

[Malthus]

5. Cheap opiates flood in, mainly from China (Fentanyl). Very potent and very easy to overdose with. Now addicts find opiates are cheaper than ever, but with a much increased risk of dropping dead if bought from a pusher. 

I thought Fentanyl had a very short-lived effect. Sounds great for recreational use but pretty bad for dealing with withdrawal.

I've had it a few times during procedures. For some reason I'm quite tolerant to it. So much one of the docs subtly asked if I was a junkie, when she saw the previous doses I had taken.

Fentanyl is often used by pushers to spike other opiates so that they appear to be potent, as this drug is a lot cheaper than heroin. The problem is that it is so potent, it can easily lead to overdose and death if not used by trained professionals.

Fentanyl is sold as a powder or a pill, or is cut into (mixed with) drugs such as heroin or cocaine. This type of fentanyl is usually sold as another substance, so people swallow, snort or inject it without realizing. Many overdoses have occurred because people did not know that what they were taking was contaminated with fentanyl.

https://www.camh.ca/en/health-info/mental-illness-and-addiction-index/street-fentanyl

Figure 5. National Overdose Deaths Involving Heroin—Number Among All Ages, 1999-2017. The figure above is a bar and line graph showing the total number of U.S. overdose deaths involving heroin from 1999 to 2017. Drug overdose deaths involving heroin rose from 1,960 in 1999 to 15,482 in 2017. The bars are overlaid by lines showing the number of deaths involving heroin in combination with other synthetic narcotics (mainly fentanyl) and without other synthetic narcotics from 1999 to 2017. The number of deaths involving heroin in combination with synthetic narcotics has been increasing steadily since 2014 and shows that the increase in deaths involving heroin is driven by the use of fentanyl (Source: CDC WONDER).

https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates

About fentanyl
Fentanyl is a very potent opioid pain reliever. It is generally used in a hospital setting, and can also be prescribed by a doctor to help control severe pain. For medical purposes, it can be given in the form of:

skin patches
injections
tablets
Fentanyl can enter into the Canadian illegal drug market in three ways:

theft of pharmaceutical fentanyl products (mainly skin patches)
illegal import from other countries
production by illegal clandestine laboratories in Canada
Canada's illegal drug supply is being contaminated with illegal fentanyl and other fentanyl-like drugs (e.g. carfentanil). You can't see, taste or smell fentanyl and a few grains can be enough to kill you. Fentanyl is a cheap way for drug dealers to make street drugs more powerful and it is causing high rates of overdoses and overdose deaths.

Illegal drugs may contain unknown amounts of fentanyl. Drug dealers who make fake pills may not know or control carefully how much fentanyl goes into each pill. As well, sometimes drugs may accidently contain fentanyl when drug dealers use surfaces and equipment contaminated with fentanyl.

What makes fentanyl so dangerous?
Fentanyl is a dangerous drug because:

it is 20 to 40 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine, which makes the risk of accidental overdose very high
a very small amount (about the size of a few grains of salt) of pure fentanyl is enough to kill the average adult
it is odourless and tasteless, so you may not even know you are taking it
it can be mixed with other drugs such as heroin and cocaine, and is also being found in counterfeit pills that are made to look like prescription opioids

https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/substance-use/controlled-illegal-drugs/fentanyl.html

[Syt]

Someone posted this map on Twitter, because they couldn't figure out what differentiates white and blue countries. The maps seems to be from ca. 1990. Anybody here have any idea?

[Barrister]

It's probably related to the fact it's a roadmap, but I've got nothing.

[The Brain]

Yeah, looks like a way to break up a roadmap to help with orientation while keeping printing costs down.

[Oexmelin]

It's probably related to the fact it's a roadmap, but I've got nothing.

Countries with tolls on highways vs countries without?

[Admiral Yi]

Do you know Syt, or are we tossing guesses into a void?

[Iormlund]

Left-Right? 

At a first glance: González & Mitterrand vs Major, Andreotti & Kohl. Hod knows about the rest ... 

[Eddie Teach]

Blue: government successfully infiltrated (by lizard aliens)
White: not yet

[ulmont]

2. All opiates carry a risk of addiction. Why some succumb to that risk and others do not is not well understood. Nor is it easy to control.

I'm pretty sure it's down to "do you enjoy the sensations of opiates or not, and do you have nausea as a result of opiates?"

No real way to figure it out without trying opiates, of course.

[Syt]

Do you know Syt, or are we tossing guesses into a void?

Nobody seems to know, including the map's owner.

[garbon]

2. All opiates carry a risk of addiction. Why some succumb to that risk and others do not is not well understood. Nor is it easy to control.

I'm pretty sure it's down to "do you enjoy the sensations of opiates or not, and do you have nausea as a result of opiates?"

No real way to figure it out without trying opiates, of course.

Perhaps your second sentence explains the simplistic analysis in your first.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Strongest argumnet seems to be that it is four-colour printing with one of the colours faded out.

See a similar discussion for a map of the US states that looks pretty similar :

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/174tnn/why_are_some_states_on_this_map_blue_and_some/

[Syt]

Strongest argumnet seems to be that it is four-colour printing with one of the colours faded out.

See a similar discussion for a map of the US states that looks pretty similar :

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/174tnn/why_are_some_states_on_this_map_blue_and_some/

I thought of that, too, but the roads (red) and large cities (yellow) seem to have retained their color. Unless they used a different kind of ink for them?