Maylia and Jack: A Story of Teens and Fentanyl

October 9, 2024 7:12 AM

Two teens got caught up in a system unprepared to handle kids on either side of the drug trade. (slProPublica) - CW: teenage death, drug use
posted by Kitteh (9 comments total)

Thank you. I'm... a later middle-aged white guy, who didn't even smoke pot 'til his 20s, so there are clearly a bunch of things I'm out of touch with, but all of the Fentanyl hype confuses me. In my area we have billboards, and flyers for concerts that... I don't know how "kids these days" are receiving the message, but to me it seems like the messaging on all of these just make Fentanyl look cool.

(And I'd imagine that the image of cops freaking out over touching it probably amplifies that message. That sort of reaction doesn't drive credibilty.)

My attempts to try to figure out why manufacturers would sell Fentanyl as Percocet end up in deep wells of prohibitionist literature, or, at best, discussions of why small scale manufacturers have dosage control issues. Which all...

Seems like we need a strong pivot to harm reduction, but the "this isn't working, let's do it harder!" crowd has control of the mic and policy.
posted by straw at 8:42 AM on October 9 [3 favorites]

I think because fentanyl is cheaper and easier to make than Oxy, and it is very potent, so whatever you do make can make a lot more pills. As mentioned in the article, even the kid who died says, "I'm not doing fentanyl!", so I think most people get that it is dangerous to use as a recreational drug.
posted by Windopaene at 9:50 AM on October 9 [2 favorites]

The post-00s opioid prescription crackdown has greatly reduced the availability of genuine oxycodone. Meanwhile fentanyl (and analogs) are relatively easy to synthesize and ~100x as potent as morphine so they are the obvious economical substitute (for any opioid).

“M30” pills were never actually Percocet, which is the oxycodone equivalent of Vicodin, a lowish dose acetaminophen combo. They were a Mallinckrodt generic for Roxicodone, the highest dose instant release oxy available. Now they are almost invariably counterfeit. Both the appearance and the name are just branding at this point. Experienced drug users know that these pills are fentanyl presses. Kids who heard about “percs” from a song may not.
posted by atoxyl at 10:53 AM on October 9 [8 favorites]

Devastating portrait of systemic failure all around. Infuriating.
posted by windbox at 10:54 AM on October 9 [6 favorites]

.

Who was helped here? What’s been prevented?

Poor Carrie. At least she has a good heart.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:24 AM on October 9

That handwritten note to his mom is identical to the one my loved one wrote me 25 years ago, a few months before he OD'd. Articles like this are good for people who are too young to know the details, but this shit hasn't changed in a long, long time.
posted by Melismata at 11:48 AM on October 9 [8 favorites]

Today should be my dear friend Liz's 32nd birthday. She only made it to 29 because of fentanyl. I have a lot of dear friends gone too soon thanks to fetty. I also can't find it in my heart to blame their faceless, nameless dealers for their deaths, let alone a minor raised under these horrific circumstances.
posted by infinitewindow at 1:32 PM on October 9 [8 favorites]

Having known quite a few dealers’ names and faces, most of them were drug users themselves, or general fuckups who couldn’t hold down a regular job, or people who had been doing it since they were teenagers and never had a regular job, or people whose whole families had been in the business for years.

And I was never in my life mad at any of them for selling me drugs, I’ll tell you that. If you’re actually Pablo Escobar that’s another story, but I hate these kinds of laws.
posted by atoxyl at 2:11 PM on October 9 [5 favorites]

I came away from this entirely applauding Maylia's entrepreneurial spirit. Every one of the adults in her life comprehensively failed her, so she tried to make a life for herself with the tools she had. In a world where finance capital didn't make it next to impossible for legit small businesses to succeed, she'd be working herself into prosperity.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 4:14 AM on October 10