Crap. I didn't know spoons cool could have BPA so we didn't check.
As long as you didn't put them in your baby's mouth, you're fine.
I think I agree with your theses, but I'm not an expert on either topic.
I'll look for backup, but my sense is that fentanyl is a huge overdose problem for people using illegal/unregulated drugs, and zero problem at all in terms of accidental exposure. It's used in medical contexts all the time with no special safety precautions.
I haven't been following either story closely, but my general impression is that the risk of having skin contact with fentynal is overstated, but opioid overdose deaths are a major issue: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/03/the-drug-overdose-epidemic-2
I think the Daily Show was mocking police officers who were freaked out about handling drug paraphenalia because of the possibility of fentanyl space dust or something? It was in the realm of illegal drugs.
I've read that police officers who have symptoms from very incidental exposure to fentanyl are experiencing psychosomatic symptoms and I don't doubt it. I also don't feel the kind of implicit smugness in those articles because I'm fairly sure even knowing the dangers are exaggerated, I'm very vulnerable to that kind of anxiety.
Midwife, before my first labor: come in when you want, if it's too early for an epidural you can have a fentanyl patch.
I am also pretty sure that when Pebbles had emergence delirium following surgery two years ago, they fixed it by giving her fentanyl which knocked her out so she could wake up again. ("It's like doing a soft reset on your phone", said the anaesthesiologist.)
It is not a big deal in proper medical contexts.
Yeah, I know fentanyl patches are a controlled, reasonable thing in pain relief contexts.
I think the space dust thing is psychosomatic. I think the bigger problem is an offshoot of the Oxycontin/opioid crisis, which as you say is getting attention because of whom it affects.
6, 7: Yeah, specifically the genre of cop videos and stories showing an "overdose" from possibly touching fentanyl are either complete bullshit or social contagion -- the cop may be having real symptoms generated by sincere belief in the possibility, but the symptoms aren't caused by fentanyl exposure.
There is a huge problem of people dying from fentanyl overdoses, but it's all people taking drugs with fentanyl in them, not getting some on their hands.
You should still wash your hands after you touch an unknown powder.
It's important to keep the two contexts mentally separated, because one is a huge, real social problem and the other is complete fantasy.
E.g., https://health.ucdavis.edu/news/headlines/can-fentanyl-be-absorbed-through-your-skin/2022/10 .
I agree with the hive mind here about fentanyl.
As for the other scary topic in the OP, it kind of blurs together with all the other security theater in airports. I think in some airports I've seen posters that seemed oriented at human trafficking not specific to sex trafficking? I assume because the trafficker could underpay and otherwise mistreat undocumented labor more. And of course all the other scary stuff in airports. Flying sucks these days. I can't wait for Atossa to be big enough to go visit Cassandane's parents without an adult accompanying her. Legally and as a matter of airport policy she already is but she's scared of the concept and I'd say she's a little young for it myself.
Southwest will let her be the copilot, if that seems safer.
Agree with everyone about fentanyl. I do think it's reasonable to be more fearful of all illegal drugs right now, for reasons that I don't understand at all people seem to lace even non-opioid drugs with fentanyl sometimes. Or is that rare and just makes the news because it's scary?
People's ideas of sex-trafficking are mostly taken from Liam Neeson films, no? In reality isn't it mostly boyfriends and family, and not strangers, right? (See also, kidnapping in general.)
I think trafficking is also an issue where very different problems are being conflated. Small children being kidnapped and sold for sex? Not a thing that happens. Voluntary illegal immigrants working to pay off the people who got them into the country? Definitely happens. And there are levels of coercion, involuntary-ness, and sex work in between those things, at varying levels of intensity. It's hard to talk about it all as one thing.
Yeah, the sex trafficking moral panic is particularly focused on the idea that YOUR KIDS or YOU YOURSELF will be SNATCHED in any public place, stoked by police just-so stories about the "telltale signs" that result in nothing but false alarms. Some particularly silly outgrowths: theories on Tiktok that the weird spam texts you're getting are the prelude to you being trafficked.
So it doesn't mean sex trafficking doesn't exist, but as you say, it's marginalized people and is kept pretty private most of the time.
The other big issue with sex trafficking I'm aware of is that there's little daylight between advocacy on that keyword and advocacy to crack down on all sex work. They are often quite upfront about believing every instance of sex work to be per se trafficking. So the statistics grow.
And to add to paragraph 2: it's usually founded in personal or business relationships rather than random kidnappings. Boyfriends who become exploiters; immigration facilitators; etc.
On fentanyl, I have to say, while it does seem correct that it is pretty fucking bad, I'm not sure there's a time in the past forty years when the informed middle-class/journalistic opinion wasn't "street drugs are worse now than they've ever been before."
19 Obviously more localized, but I'd add MMIW as a instance that exists, in numbers maybe not high enough to make people in airports scared, but high enough that the traditional indifference of law enforcement stands out.
I'm going to guess that most of you don't see billboards with individual MMIW on them, with contact phone numbers. It's maybe like the milk cartons of old, but hyper-local. The idea isn't to make you panic, I don't think; families do this hoping someone saw their kid.
I don't think I've seen a specific MMIW billboard for a couple of years. There's a general awareness one I drive by every few months, though.
I agree with the hive mind here about fentanyl.
It sounds like there's consensus, but now that I'm on a desktop, quoting from the link in 5
In 2021 -- the most recent year for which complete statistics are available -- approximately 107,622 Americans died from drug overdoses. (This is up from about 17,000 twenty years earlier.)
71,000 of these deaths were caused by synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl. Heroin accounted for another 10,000. 16,000 were caused by prescription opioids.
Here are the total percentage of all deaths caused by drug overdoses, by age group (Note that there are almost no drug overdose deaths among children 14 and younger, and very few among people 65 and older):
Age 15-24: 20% of all deaths
Age 25-34: 30% of all deaths
Age 35-44: 22% of all deaths
Age 45-54: 10% of all deaths
Age 55-64: 4% of all deaths
As I've noted before, all-cause mortality rates among 25-34 year olds are now higher than they've been at any point in the last 75 years.
(We've made a number of advances on this legislatively over the last four years. It only now occurs to me that the nationwide trafficking panic has been a big help to getting Republicans to vote resources for this. Panic trumps white supremacy, for now anyway.)
Overdose deaths had been declining in NH for several years. Overdoses were not declining, but overdose deaths were.
NH had taken a harm reduction approach to opioid use during the pandemic, including Medically Assisted Treatment (MAT) and it seemed to be working. This is in contrast with neighboring VT that had not gone in for harm reduction and where deaths were continuing to rise.
Unfortunately, the fentanyl wave has turned around that progress and overdose deaths in NH in 2022 were the worst they have been since 2017.
25 Those stats are astonishing. 30% is a whole lot.
One issue with fentanyl and ODs is how many other drugs are cut with it. There's a whole bunch of drugs I did a lot of in my drug-taking youth that I wouldn't go anywhere near today if I were so inclined on account of that and I'm terrified for my 20 year old nephew.
Democrat here. I think when someone describes a life experience I don't relate to, my instinct is to try really hard to relate to it, ask them if they're willling to try to describe it in terms I understand better, read accounts from other people with similar experiences, but if I still can't relate to it after all that I do tend to assume they're lying albeit I'm polite about it.
Yeah. I figure lots of people are lying to manipulate me but I try not to get angry about it if they are in real need.
Taken movies seems to be the white UMC Christian fear du jour. No one is stealing middle class babies on the I-15 corridor to take to Mexico for slavery. It's frustrating because human trafficking is a problem, but the problem some think it is doesn't exist.
No one is stealing middle class babies on the I-15 corridor to take to Mexico for slavery.
Speak for yourself, Cala. Some of us have bills to pay.
Ryan Marino is a toxicologist who does a great job debunking fentanyl myths. Mostly on Twitter but I think he's been branching out to other platforms.
32: Is it a fear or is it a fantasy? Like by pretending this is a threat they get to feel like Liam Neeson protecting their kids, despite not having a very particular set of skills. It's like how people have guns not because they're afraid of someone breaking into their house, but because they have a fantasy about killing someone breaking into their house. (I suppose there's not a completely clear line between the two.)
When cops say that they were hospitalized because they touched fentanyl, those cops are lying. They may be lying to get paid time off, they may be lying to get positive media attention, they may be lying because they confiscated and ingested fentanyl or some other drug, but they are lying. Fentanyl simply doesn't work that way. (After the George Floyd protests here, some unbelievable percentage of MPLS cops were out on "PTSD" claims, sitting home and drawing their pay after being traumatized by tear gassing and beating the citizens - who of course don't qualify for trauma PTO. We get cop claims recently that they are "traumatized" when people protest while they clear homeless encampments. You get overtime pay for standing around while the Park Service bulldozes people's belongings and then you get several weeks of paid vacation because it was so incredibly traumatic to hear anyone complain.)
Anyway.
The biggest way to prevent trafficking is to provide unconditional housing, especially youth housing. People do sex work that they don't want to do - that is, actually trafficking and survival sex work - because they don't have anywhere safe to go and they need to pay for a hotel, pay for the security that a pimp or a boyfriend provides or just pay for necessities when they are on the street. A disproportionate percentage of homeless youth are LGBTQ and either don't have shelter available to them or are not safe in available shelter, for instance.
If people could walk in off the street and get some kind of safe room with a door they could close, we could wind down most coerced/survival sex work and a lot of addiction within a few years. I mean, obviously it would be ideal if we could also provide a great variety of services to people, but just giving people a safe room to sleep in, regular meals and time is going to get an awful lot of people back on their feet.
In terms of trafficked youth, higher wages for parents, secure housing and school/park services would go a long way. The little kids who get targeted are neglected/abused kids or kids whose parents are working all the time and can't watch them.
This is all so grim. Things are so, so fucked up in Minneapolis right now - the more I know about the situation, the worse is turns out to be. We've got money - at the moment a good amount of money because this is a liberal city and we got a lot of positive media coverage recently - to buy tents and handwarmers for people, but we can't get the fucking police off people's cases and we can't get actual shelter built, so it's all trying to empty the ocean with a bucket.
Also, be a little bit cautious if you think you've seen a "missing" kid. Sometimes kids are missing-missing, but sometimes they ran away from an abusive home and the family is doing all this social media mendacity to get them returned.
Combining 22 and 25: the dramatic increase in overdose deaths-- doubling in 10 years, almost five times higher over the past 20 years-- is taking place even though the total rates of drug use are fairly stable over that time. So in this case, the street drugs really are worse!
Minivet is right that 'the drugs are worse' is a constant refrain and is normally just a moral panic, but in this case there's something to it. Probably the other time that it was true was with the introduction of crack in the 1986-1990ish period.
I have a very particular set of skills and I've worked with SAS for decades.
I was looking at a transcript of one of the YWA episodes and they mentioned that Polaris, an anti-trafficking organization, to its credit has a big section of its website on misconceptions and urban legends. It's worth reading! They have an analysis of calls to a hotline and find reports of about 16,000 sex trafficking victims in 2021, and say that is of course a fraction of overall cases, but don't venture to propose what the actual range might be.
Polaris even lists "Parents and other adults should be on the lookout for strangers who are hunting for children to exploit" as one of the many myths!
When cops say that they were hospitalized because they touched fentanyl, those cops are lying. They may be lying to get paid time off, they may be lying to get positive media attention, they may be lying because they confiscated and ingested fentanyl or some other drug, but they are lying. Fentanyl simply doesn't work that way.
Yes, this is one of the major points Marino makes every time one of these stories shows up in credulous local media coverage. There is just no way the symptoms they're describing have anything to do with incidental contact with fentanyl. That's not how it works physiologically.
Aren't a lot of the "cop who touched fentanyl" symptoms more resembling panic attacks? I could imagine a good chunk of the time that is what is happening based on the cop having been propagandized in training, not deliberate lying. But always BS, yes.
I would believe that the symptoms are sometimes real panic attacks. The publicity about them has to be largely lying -- it's not hard to check the facts on what's possible.
44: Agreed, cop PR departments love the incidents.
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Woman.
A theme on Three Pines, where the guy who got spiked in the head at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark is a detective.
One issue with fentanyl and ODs is how many other drugs are cut with it. There's a whole bunch of drugs I did a lot of in my drug-taking youth that I wouldn't go anywhere near today if I were so inclined on account of that and I'm terrified for my 20 year old nephew.
This is exactly what I'm wondering about fentanyl. When I hear about local kids or a student at my school ODing, what level of risk-taking were they engaged in? Are minor youthful transgressions now having outsized impacts? Where the yardstick for youthful transgressions = me.
Making Indy throw you the idol before you give him the whip and then not giving him the whip is a pretty big transgression.
49 there are fentanyl test kits you can buy online from Amazon and the like. But will they use them? Also you have to test every single pill to be sure.
49: I'm having trouble finding any real breakdown that says how much of a risk non-opioids are, but it sure seems like it's not completely unusual for any illegally produced pill to have fentanyl, which includes stuff that could easily fall under the minor youthful transgressions umbrella. (Depending on your youth. I've never had any risk tolerance, so I wouldn't know what's normal.)
"This pill was produced in a garage where pills containing fentanyl are also produced. And we're eating peanuts the whole time. "
I guess there is decent evidence that fentanyl is put into other street drugs, but what I don't get is why that's profitable for the manufacturers. Is fentanyl that cheap? I thought fillers were usually non-drug components.
I think fentanyl is cheap, easy to produce in a lab so you don't need to smuggle it over borders, and has a dramatic effect at very low levels. If you put fentanyl in what you're selling, no one is going to complain that they didn't get high.
I thought the point was to need use less of the active ingredient to get some effect.
I thought fentanyl was still produced abroad though. It's easier and cheaper to smuggle because you don't need much. One thing Cocaine Bear really highlights is how bulky 80s drugs were.
48: Now you're just doing it on purpose.
49: "Kids, you can drink all the alcohol you want, but be careful if anyone hands you an open container. Make sure your weed is locally sourced."
Whatever "it" is, I'm never not doing it on purpose.
Kids, you can drink all the alcohol you want, but be careful if anyone hands you an open container.
This is an actual thing! Controversial, of course.
60: I can't find the link. Maybe I was imagining things. But I had the impression you had recently referred to Alfred Molina from Three Pines by his Indiana Jones appearance, and I chimed in about his Spider-Man appearance. Was it someone else here? Or maybe somewhere else entirely.
Yes, I've been doing that a fair bit.
36: yeah, there's also a thing where being Concerned about Trafficking is a thing, but so is kicking your teen out of the house because they're queer, and uh, it's the latter that leads to a lot more risk of trafficking!
36: yeah, there's also a thing where being Concerned about Trafficking is a thing, but so is kicking your teen out of the house because they're queer, and uh, it's the latter that leads to a lot more risk of trafficking!
36: yeah, there's also a thing where being Concerned about Trafficking is a thing, but so is kicking your teen out of the house because they're queer, and uh, it's the latter that leads to a lot more risk of trafficking!
Carfentanyl is the future! 100x stronger than Fentanyl. Might be strong enough that there is an inhalation risk from tiny amounts? Contact risk is still minimal.
I had Fentanyl twice in December and didn't have any adverse effect. Oddly enough it was the weaker stuff, Dilaudid, that fucked me up.
My doctor is really upping the guilt for butt-camera, so maybe they'll give me fentanyl for that? He didn't think much of 'plan shit in a box".
50: It sure kept him out of the sequel, though I'm glad that he found more work even with a spike in his head. Does seem like that would make it tough to ever be in disguise as a detective.
It's set in Quebec, so it blends in.
I used to be connected with an embedded clinic that was providing primary care services to victims of trafficking (not just sex). I didn't really trust all of their data, but it did seem like it wasn't just undocumented people. And it wasn't just in bad neighborhoods. The immigrant nanny in a well-off neighborhood could be a victim. And it did seem like there were white people who were pulled into sex trafficking through drugs or abusive boyfriend relationships. Somebody in Boston was charged with grooming 2 people, one of whom was a minor, a couple of months ago.
WGBH, which is a fairly straight-shooting news organization, said that labor trafficking happens a lot among people with unstable housing.
67: carfentanyl was a problem in Vancouver for a while.
68: I just looked up my colonoscopy record. I got propofol and intravenous lidocaine.
46 and 47: My understanding is that there are a bunch of missing and murdered indigineous people in Canada, and there are big problems with the police follow through on investigations.
https://www.cbc.ca/missingandmurdered/
58: As of a couple years ago (when the meticulously-reported article about this that I read a few months ago was written), fentanyl was just being mailed over from China. A tiny pouch, completely below anybody's practical means to check*, is enough to spike countless doses.
Same article talked about how the whole Breaking Bad model of meth is now a thing of the past, and that new techniques make it so that anybody with half a brain can learn to make massive quantities of meth without any expensive inputs, nor hideous smells that require remote locations and therefore complex distribution paths. I don't recall if there was a good reason beyond 55/56 that fentanyl has gotten involved. Like, if the meth is super cheap and easy, why go to the trouble of cutting it with something that kills your customers?
Maybe this is why drug dealers have bad reputations.
*I think there was also a specific thing about lowered standards for shipping from China, lowered to facilitate globalization.
I've never had any risk tolerance, so I wouldn't know what's normal.
Same, mostly. Never had casual sex bc of fear of AIDS, never tried tripping because of fear of One Bad Trip*, never tried hard drugs because the risk/reward seemed bad even assuming a good supply.
OTOH, helmetless biking; I'm a land of contrasts!
*I knew this was kind of a myth, but I also saw firsthand a good friend of mine turn into an acid casualty**, so I knew fear-mongering around acid wasn't pure BS.
**she eventually moved on to heroin and basically ruined her life, but even before then she became an extremely low-functioning person thanks to way too much acid.
I used to be afraid to soak my feet because I thought "bath salts" was literal bath salts.
Oddly enough it was the weaker stuff, Dilaudid, that fucked me up
Maybe the concentration wasn't diludid enough.
I have no risk tolerance for any physical thrills. Jammies took me mountain biking one time, and I couldn't figure out what was supposed to be fun about this terrifying endeaver.
Also gambling leaves me cold, but we recently discussed all that.
(But boy do I love a good trip. Absolutely nothing better.)
Is pot ever laced with fentanyl or carfentanyl or Super Mario Carfentanyl? I'm trying to come up with good heuristics that I can teach my kids that aren't so restrictive that they throw the whole thing out. I'm thinking something like:
- Don't try things with high addiction rates.
- If something mild is going around, don't be the first person to take a toke/try it out. Wait to make sure other people seem not knocked senseless by it.
- Be very careful because everything is still illegal in Texas.
If something mild is going around, don't be the first person to take a toke/try it out.
Have a couple of friends you don't like so much that you aren't willing to sacrifice them.
I know, that does seem a bit cynical. "There's a bear coming! Why are you lacing up your shoes?"
The bear goes for the kid with the most cocaine.
Or, Modern Family cast member with the most cocaine.
I know someone who has written about one of these topics: https://www.jenniferlobasz.com/research.html
for reasons that I don't understand at all people seem to lace even non-opioid drugs with fentanyl sometimes.
Xylazine and fentanyl seems to be emerging as a popular mix.
84: Xylazine sounds absolutely terrifying. Also, naloxone doesn't work since it's non-opioid. Oh, and the oozing sores and subsequent gangrene? Ick.
67: Yep. Elephant tranquilizers are really fucking potent. ug quantities have pharmacological effects IV, not sure how uptake would be via inhalation.
I'm trying to come up with good heuristics that I can teach my kids that aren't so restrictive that they throw the whole thing out.
No one here has mentioned naloxone yet? Carry naloxone. If you're going to be using any drugs with friends, make sure you all have it / know where it is, and know how to use it, and know how to identify an overdose. (Naloxone administration isn't rocket science, but it helps to think about these things ahead of time.) It's available via statewide standing order in Texas, so you can go into a pharmacy and ask for it.
Toxicology on fatal opioid-related overdoses in my state shows ~95% include fentanyl, and that well over half of them include cocaine. Not clear how many of those cocaine users meant to be using fentanyl.
Oh hey, someone mentioned naloxone while I was writing my comment. YAY harm reduction.
Pretty much everyone above is correct about cops & fentanyl. But to add to that: you know who never has a big freakout medical event around exposure to fentanyl? Street outreach workers, needle exchange staff, low threshold shelter staff.
"no pills" seems like a good rule. My older child consumes a lot of marijuana (not legal in our state) and some 'marijuana products' I'm pretty sure. He follows that rule not just for fear of fentanyl but also because of his low levels of self control, which means anything potentially addictive is a bad idea, and he recognizes that.
Aww, no ecstasy? Er, uh, whatever the youths are calling it these days.
I'm trying to come up with good heuristics that I can teach my kids that aren't so restrictive that they throw the whole thing out.
Fentanyl testing strips should be used with any kind of powder. Though really its better to say away from powder, that shit is bad for you.
85- The active isomer of Naloxone is half nM for mu opioid which normally you'd think would be a good antagonist. Carfentanyl is friggin low pM though so you have to overwhelm it with excess concentration to have an effect.
Carfentanil has never really taken off as as a street drug, at least not in MA. There are scares about it every once in a while, but it has never actually become the next big thing.
All the cool kids are working on over-the-counter Naloxone.
I'm delighted that you're all too high to remember any presidents.
(Random stupid but immortal drug story: my ex and friends were too impaired to recall the word "dinosaur" but eventually all found consensus on "dinoceros," which sounded weird, probably because they were high, but was obviously right.)
Is pot ever laced with fentanyl or carfentanyl or Super Mario Carfentanyl?
Ever? It's a great big world, any wildly improbable thing can happen eventually. But for all intents and purposes, no. The people who would lace pot with fentanyl are too busy trying to find blotter acid to give out to kids at Halloween.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fentanyl-laced-marijuana-rise/
I thought they were giving out edibles at Halloween, but Nextdoor kept deleting my posts asking where.
98: Moby, hasn't anyone told you about the code? Next Halloween ask who is handing out the "spicy candy".
83: I bet that author has some great things to add! Not sure if you want to ask them if they'd like to share things here directly that are relevant.
A few years ago an anti-human trafficking organization did a presentation at my office. There wasn't anything about stopping international criminal organizations from kidnapping children and turning them into sex slaves. The focus of the organization was on helping teenager and young adult sex workers with drug rehabilitation and vocational rehabilitation, and getting the justice system to treat them as victims rather than criminals. It seemed like they mostly did good work, but I wonder whether what that is what people picture when they imagine an organization that "combats human trafficking."
Oh god, that gave me a new understanding as to how these news cycles perpetuate themselves.
News: We have a new phenomenon that will kill your kids!
Existing nonprofits: we will be able to get more donor money and support if we place our existing work in the context of the new phenomenon!
News: We have evidence that the phenomenon is GROWING!
Anti-trans nonprofits must be just filling their coffers right now.
I would be happy to answer questions here!
103: Funny you should mention that. ("maia crimew" is the left-wing Swiss hacktivist who leaked the no-fly list.)
104: President Liam Neeson, what's the percentage of sex-trafficked minors who are gay or trans? My understanding is that, like, a significant percentage of these reflect children and young adults who have run away from or been kicked out of their homes and are trading sex for housing informally--is that right?
106: My terrible answer is that I don't trust any of the data purporting to tell us. Federal law says that all prostitution of minors is sex trafficking, so perhaps there are reliable statistics of LGBTQ+ minors doing sex work (though I know enough about the shitty methodology of these kinds of surveys to be leery of trusting even that). That said, I think most people imagine a higher degree of force, fraud, or coercion than is typically present with survival sex when they think of "sex trafficking," and I don't trust any of those numbers at all.
Speaking as someone who is still in the process of metabolizing a dose of fentanyl, I'm afraid I have to revise an earlier recommendation: The low-sodium chicken stir-fry is no longer available at The Hospital Where Natilo Goes For Treatment of Minor Heart Attacks, but has been replaced with a fairly bland coconut chicken curry.
That doesn't sound good. Take care of yourself.
108: Fingers crossed for an easy recovery (and better food)!
Back home now. +4 stents. Already planning on blowing $1,400 on two crowns next month. Oh well. Gold is filth.
They didn't let me get a gold crown. I need a better dentist. Glad you're home.
This reminds me that I failed to make an appointment for a stress test, and it wasn't my fault. I have to start again on Monday.
At one point, I was asked to send a fax. I guess nuclear medicine has a retro anesthetic.
Local fentanyl-related news:
https://www.woodtv.com/news/van-buren-county/msp-4-kilos-of-fentanyl-found-in-traffic-stop/
AJ's summary was "some guy was arrested transporting enough fentanyl to kill 2 million people." I had to wonder how much fentanyl that was . . . Apparently about 9 lbs.
Natilo, best wishes for a rapid return to regular health. Take care.
I mean, a lorry load of road gravel is probably " enough gravel to kill 200,000 people" if you want to go that way. My lomcal gym has an unsealed tank containing enough dihydrogen monoxide to suffocate the entire population of the town.
And I thought our road maintenance people were reckless.
The thing about killing people with road gravel is that it doesn't damage the gravel. If you're dedicated, you could use the same gravel to kill an arbitrarily large number of people. Whereas fentanyl is one and done, regardless of your dedication.
Over centuries, you'd eventually be killing people with sand.
They say sand is how the ancient Egyptians bored into granite.
But I say sand, it is a flower
And you, its only seed