a young addict who was known to most of the community checked out and promptly died with a needle in his arm. It took only a few hours after the news broke for the center to empty out entirely—not to mourn, but to score. The patients recognized in their friend’s death a sign of high-quality dope. You’ve probably seen similar phenomena in your community; regional bursts in overdoses tend to occur not because most addicts don’t know what’s to be found but because they do. They are victims of the laws of pharmacology who fail to recognize that even drugs like fentanyl and carfentanil, which are
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