The public sentiment regarding the fentanyl crisis is predominantly negative, reflecting widespread frustration and pessimism about the handling of the crisis. Many commenters express anger and despair over the impact of fentanyl on communities and individuals, highlighting personal tragedies and societal failures. There is significant skepticism about international cooperation, particularly between the U.S. and India, with concerns about corruption, economic incentives, and inefficacy due to key players like China. Despite some positive views on India’s stance against high pharmaceutical prices, there are calls for both domestic and international action, emphasizing the need for holistic solutions tackling both systemic issues and on-the-ground enforcement.

United States Government

Indian Government

Pharmaceutical Companies

Chinese Government

China produces lots of pharmaceuticals and active components to drugs. Many of the ones you have in your medicine cabinet comes from China. It’s the same reason so many things are made in China: it’s cheaper and more profitable.

stopstopp

Politics and history aside, there's a much simpler explanation for this.

Nearly all fentanyl is made using a synthesis pathway that starts with a chemical commonly used in pharmaceutical manufacturing called 4-piperidone (or one of its closely related derivatives). These compounds are themselves synthesized from a chemical called piperidine which is one of the most widely used stock chemicals in the world.

It just happens that, for purely commercial reasons, a large percentage of the world's piperidine and 4-piperidone are made in China. There are six major chemical manufacturers there who produce tons of the stuff every year. This was the case long before the fentanyl crisis in the US and, unless somebody comes up with a way to beat the Chinese price on piperidine, it's going to be the case long into the future.

The only blame China has in the fentanyl crisis is that they make stuff cheaper than anybody else. Yeah, they have some sloppy export controls but if the Chinese weren't making the stuff somebody else would be. Piperidine is easy to produce - you can literally synthesize it from ground up black pepper - so if the cheap supply from China gets cut off people would just start brewing their own in a garage someplace.

It may be politically expedient to blame China for the fentanyl crisis but the theory honestly doesn't carry much weight.

Chester_Bumpkowicz

Read up on the opium wars. I do not believe that past transgressions 150 years ago should excuse bad behaviour now, but if you buy into the idea that it’s ok to hold a grudge and seek revenge for something their great grandfather did to your great grandfather, then China selling Fentanyl to us makes sense.

The Opium wars was basically Europeans, led by UK going to war with China in 1860 to protect their lucrative opium trade in China, that the Emperor wanted to ban, because of how opium destroyed society in China.

Xandurpein

Two reasons:

1. Money

2. It’s justified as revenge for China’s Century of Humiliation 

Any Westerners that die is a bonus as part of that revenge. The CCP could cut down this trade tremendously if they wanted to, but why should they when it’s all win/win for them?

CryptoOGkauai

It's profitable, and the Chinese government doesn't mind them exporting it to us.

rockeye13

I just watch the Task and Purpose episode on it, but aren't India also producing a lot of those precursor chemicals?

[https://youtu.be/BjsSuWKz2s0?t=843](https://youtu.be/BjsSuWKz2s0?t=843)

Seems to me to be more a failure of drug administration in the USA and China, India and Mexican carttels are just going where the profits are.

Antiwhippy

[deleted]

India is doing pretty much the same thing as China. 

https://www.csis.org/analysis/dangerous-opioid-india

https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade/India-s-role-in-illicit-synthetic-drug-trade-draws-closer-scrutiny

Is India non conventional methods to fight the United States?

That_Shape_1094

US could easily stop overdoses by dispensing safe supply, it's a crisis by political failure.

overdoses actually increased when less opioids got prescribed

HironTheDisscusser

As others have pointed out: India is doing even worse.
So ask yourself if India is doing this to battle the US or to profit?

Not that China isn’t waging open and secret warfare on its enemies but if exporting substances would be considered warfare so could be the export of toys sprayed with toxic colors.

BlerghTheBlergh

If you're a true researcher you'd ask an open question instead of already implying the answer. India is an even bigger rival of China than the US since those countries are in a symbiotic relationship and India is not. Besides India is an upcoming US rival as well even if Modi tries to be friends.

singhapura

Shouldnt this be in r/ conspiracy theories?

scipio211


&gt;Whenever there has been a spike in US China trade or other tensions (e.g. President Trump's moves to curb imports, or Ms. Pelosi's visit to Taiwan) China has provided more assistance to producers of the raw materials going into Fentanyl.   

Where are you getting this information? What kind of assistance are they providing?

&gt;A key weapon in China’s Geo political strategy is the use of its economic power. This is done to do get concessions through economic coercion, undermine a country’s economy (making it more influenced by China’s policies), or affect defence spending of a rival though a small effort of its own. 

I would like to add, for context, that this is everybody's geopolitical strategy. The US has done it in over 80 countries and counting through USAID, THE IMF, the military, sanctions etc., France is doing it to all countries that were forced to use the CFA as currency and hold their deposits hostage, the G7 (&amp;World Bank) operates in this exact fashion the collude to bring other countries under their purview.

My point is not to downplay China's efforts, as your article begins parallelizing China and the USA, but to add in context on where these strategies are being used currently in developing countries, usually with the AIM of extracting resources at an unfair/exploitative rate for that country.

Sometimes it feels like were just discussing the right switch to hit ourselves with. 

Also, the US DEA is is facilitating the fentanyl crisis, often assisting cartels and traffickers in bringing drugs into the US for distribution.

DatTingTing

to be honest 

china have no interests in check whats going on while they sell the precursor,especially the fentanyl wont go back to china，

and theres no international laws or agreement to limit the precursor trade，while Mexico factory say “trust me！” china has no reason to refuse that，

reflyer

They see it as revenge for the opium wars

Light_fires

McLurkleton

It’s not actually the first time I hear about this… but, strategically speaking, if I flood the society with cheap drugs that can kill people and slow down the society and the healthcare system, makes sense

Diossina17

* [The overall national opioid dispensing rate declined from 2012 to 2020, and in 2020, the dispensing rate had fallen to the lowest in the 15 years](https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/rxrate-maps/index.html)
* During that same time period starting in 2013, illegal synthetic opioids from China began hitting the market. 100 times stronger than morphine and at least 30 times stronger than heroin, the fentanyl trafficked from China [dramatically exacerbated overdose incidence in the United States](https://www.cdc.gov/opioids/basics/epidemic.html)
* In 2020, more than 56,000 deaths involving synthetic opioids (other than methadone) occurred in the United States, which is more deaths than from any other type of opioid. [Synthetic opioid-involved death rates increased by over 56% from 2019 to 2020 and accounted for over 82% of all opioid-involved deaths in 2020](https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/deaths/synthetic/index.html). The rate of overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids was more than 18 times higher in 2020 than in 2013.
* Fentanyl, which comprises aprox. 90% of the synthetic opioids category, and has become the leading cause of death in the age 18-45 group
* China has [systematically reduced enforcement of precursor and fentanyl analog controls](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-role-in-the-fentanyl-crisis/), [directly provided Mexican cartels with precursors to produce it](https://maritimefairtrade.org/china-weaponizes-counternarcotics-cooperation-with-u-s-risking-millions-of-lives/) and [essentially runs the black market the cartels use to sell their product](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/05/14/china-black-market-money-laundering-drug-cartels/).

While India also produces precursor chemicals, India does not use its enforcement of drug regulations as a geopolitical tools against its enemies the way China does. [When China ramps up its enforcement, production shifts to India, by both China and India-based traffickers](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8871795/). But because China has significantly now reduced its enforcement of drug regulations in very specific cases as punishment against its rivals, it remains the largest supplier. Plus, Indians are not involved with the cartels in logistics and finances like Chinese are.

taike0886

my personal opinion is that China tries everything to destabilize and whatever sticks its ok for them. I think they are involved in a lot of things in the west, from bot farms, to corrupt politicians, blackmail etc

Werdproblems

Yes China is facilitating the drug crisis / act of war

qcriderfan87

They're being paid to make and ship out. But they're not incentivizing themselves.

spidah84

Why don't chinese do fentanyl is better question

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The fact that drugs like fentanyl are easily smuggled with existing law enforcement shows that extra security will have little effect.

I don’t know how to fix our drug problem, it seems to complex to take on. Oregon tried to decriminalize them, but is going back on that, largely because they didn’t fund services properly beforehand.

If there is one thing i know, fixing this problem takes more money that most are willing to spend on it.

We can't fix the drug problem without addressing the root causes of the consumption of drugs. We've had a war on drugs since Nixon. Imagine if we took even half of the money spent on that war and put it into research into why our citizens make the decision to do what they do? It is going to be expensive? Hell yes. What if all that research boils down to the fact that our social order is a bloody mess and capitalism has screwed with most of our minds? Do we address the actual causes or just go back to funding military solutions? 

There are parts of the world where countries consider a happiness index. Imagine what the happiness index is in the US? Go state to state and conduct that study district by district for one year. It would cost less than that section of wall that fell down on the Mexican border. 

Our Founders were a little idealistic when they thought that citizens had an inalienable right to pursue life, liberty and happiness. It's a great goal to strive toward but greedy and power-hungry people rally don't want everyone to be happy.

dennismfrancisart

The solution to drugs (short term at least) is to legalize, tax, and regulate them. The drug war has done nothing but exacerbate the problem.

Prevatteism

Former law enforcement, it is 100% my opinion that at this point, legalizing and regulating heroin would provide a safer alternative to fentanyl and drastically reduce overdoses. I've dealt with everything, meth, crack, coke, heroin, oxy's, etc etc, fentanyl was above and beyond worse than anything to ever hit our streets. 

Criminalization of drug addiction does very little to curb drug use. In fact, it actually has the blowback effect of creating a market pressure on cartels to discover or develop even stronger, even more concentrated drugs. If its illegal and has to be smuggled, then naturally you need to be able to fit as much as possible in as small a volume as possible. Additionally, a drug that hits hard, wears off fast, and creates maximum dependency means higher sales volume and maximizes demand. 

Fentanyl fits the bill perfectly, and has virtually completely replaced heroin. Before I quit the force junkies I had been dealing with for years were telling me that they couldn't even *find* heroin anymore and actually *missed* when it was *just* heroin on the streets. A feeling which was mutual. 

Tl;dr legalize and regulate heroin. Tax it. Put the taxes into making treatment free and widely available. It would vastly decrease overdose deaths and make treatment possible without fearing legal reprisal.

An economically-meaningful amount of fantanyl is so tiny that I'm not sure how effective measures against smuggling it would be possible without throttling trade.

Daztur

We should also be reminded of how and why people are getting addicted in the first place.

On one hand, we have corrupt pharmaceutical and health-insurance industries. Purdue pharma, for example, famously misled people on the extremely addictive nature of OxyContin. They also pushed the drug hard on doctors to over prescribe it, as well as producing dosages that were generally extremely unnecessary. The Sackler Family puts Pablo Escobar to shame here. While that is one very recent and public example, that is just an extreme case of how the industry as a whole operates in America. And while people may point the finger at them for a few weeks while the new cycle is hot, they generally forget about our homegrown and technically legal drug lords and rather focus on people coming from south of the border.

Secondly, our expensive and poorly ran healthcare industry, high costs of housing, de-industrialization and other related issues with wages and cost of living, has produced a great deal of poverty and despair. It's not difficult to imagine how these conditions can break the spirits of many men and women, who then turn to drugs as a momentary relief. 

The way you kill the opioid crises and drug addiction in this country is to address these problems with our healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and lopsided economy. That way you kill demand, and the production and flow of drugs diminishes.

TuvixWasMurderedR1P

De-criminalization is the only viable option. Fentanyl is extremely low-volume and can easily be smuggled, demand creates supply. Prohibition only enriches criminals.

We could spend the money we currently waste on interdiction and incarceration and put it into treatment and prevention.

It probably wouldn't make the problem that much better, but at least it would stop getting worse.

&gt;The way fentanyl gets into the United States, especially through the Mexican border, has led to intense debates about border security, immigration policy, and international relations.

Yet the two biggest pieces of the problem, how fentanyl began as an export from this country and how it is as much of it gets in from all points of entry, not just from the south, never seem to affect proposed policy. The MAGA crowd wants to blame Mexico while giving internal production a pass. They want to blame China while not setting cooperation as a key to save lives.

Yes, legalizion is ideal but will go nowhere if a system similar to Portugal is not in place or gets the funding to be a factor. We cannot simply declare the war on drugs over if we do not handle the addiction crisis with support, education, and eventually a way to ween off. And incarceration is simply not working.

ChefMikeDFW

You are focused on the supply side of this problem, but neglect the demand side. There truth is there is demand for fentanyl in the US.

Trying to close the borders won't adjust the demand. It would just increase prices and profits and as such probably also increase crime rate as crime rates are linked to the difficulties people have to fund their addictions.

Personally, I think with your solution of closing the borders the fentanyl crisis will only end as soon as there is another drugs to take the main stage. You need to think of an easy way out of drug use so it can reach the maximum amount of people addicted to fentanyl. And think of what makes people use opiates rather than something less dangerous like weed, and how to prevent a switch from weed to opiates.

-Apocralypse-

My experience has been that you can stamp out one drug problem, and it just gets replaced by another. The solution is people need to stop using Fentanyl. Make the penalty of possession in the U.S. much harsher, like 25 to life. That will probably slow down the usage. Won't end it, but it should slow it down a bit.

Alarming_Serve2303

Most fentanyl that comes into the U.S. comes through Ports of Entry along the Southern Border.  Mexico is the largest trading partner of the U.S., there’s no way Border officials can inspect every truck or car coming in from Mexico.  Gov. Greg Abbott tried enhanced border inspections just beyond US inspections; it cost the Texas economy over $4B in just a few days.  

The precursor chemicals need to be stopped from entering the Western Hemisphere, and the U.S. needs better cooperation with Western Hemisphere governments.

HauntingSentence6359

Clearly any goods coming from Mexico must be searched 100% to combat what is really a form of warfare. Same with China. Both of those countries, and any other major points of origin for fentanyl, should have trade tarriffs imposed on all their goods. The profits of which will be used to fund the search of goods entering America.

And sealing the border to migrants until we've kicked the drug trade out of the country is also in order.

sund82

Border security is currently having zero impact on fentanyl supply. We could double border security, but 2 times 0 is still 0. Years of "fighting" the drug war should have taught us that prohibition is not an effective strategy.

If we want people to use less fentanyl, we would need to address the demand, not the supply. We're a capitalist nation, as long as people have money and want drugs, people will be able to buy drugs.

Wheloc

I have a simple solution:  legalize it.

Legalize all drugs.  If people want to take drugs, they will take drugs.  Prohibition certainly hasn't stopped anyone yet.

Take all of the resources currently going toward the war on drugs and repurpose them on prevention and treatment.

GrizzlyAdam12

To address the issues the OP has laid out in their post, we need to fundamentally change the narrative and scope of the war on drugs. 

First, Just Say No is bullshit. The idea that it is minor's fault that they became addicted to drugs given to them by professional drug dealing adults is disguising.

Second, if you can't stop drugs at the individual level, you have to do so at a collectivist level.

Third, The easiest way to decrease the drug trade throughout the country is to choke off all the main foreign sources of origin. China, Mexico, and India. 

Fourth, you put trade tariffs on all goods coming in from those countries. Once their bottom line is threatened, you will see them become much more interested in ending the drug trade on their end.

Fifth, for those countries unwilling or unable to stop sending drugs to America, we identify an appropriate military solution, and then we prosecute it mercilessly.

Sixth, the domestic production or mass distribution of fentanyl should become a capital crime.

Increased border security won't do a darned thing to stop people who want a drug from acquiring it or people who want to make money manufacturing and selling that drug from making and selling it.  This has been the lesson since the 1970's and before.  The Hollywood thinking that enough commandos and enough barricades is going to do anything at all is feel good but not real good.  You have to remember that the other team is playing too.  They see your moves, and they have all day to think of ways to get their product into the country.  The only way to stop this is to destroy the demand.  Either eliminate the factors that make people want to get high instead of drunk or legalize getting high and sell the crap yourself.  These are the higher reward lower risks options.  Otherwise please think of something else.  Whenever the world pits barbarians against egalitarians, the barbarians win.  The first wave definitely dies but they never stop coming.

Sapriste

&gt;It's also really important to get China to control how much of these chemicals they send out.

You know Biden already did that right? [https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-xi-meet-us-china-military-economic-tensions-grind-2023-11-15/](https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-xi-meet-us-china-military-economic-tensions-grind-2023-11-15/)

  
For working with Mexico (I agree that's the best way) these are mexicos demands: [https://apnews.com/article/mexico-border-crossings-migrants-venezuela-cuba-6844e96d09bee286964e9bac15d06fba](https://apnews.com/article/mexico-border-crossings-migrants-venezuela-cuba-6844e96d09bee286964e9bac15d06fba)

It is complex man

Professional_Cow4397

&gt;On the other hand, people who don't agree with this say that only focusing on border security isn't enough and might even be bad. They say that the demand for drugs in the United States makes the supply, and that efforts should focus on reducing addiction and making public health better. They say that we need to reform drug policies, like making it easier for people to get treatment for substance use disorders, getting more money for mental health services, and using strategies that reduce harm. They also say that we need to deal with the social and economic conditions that make people use and sell drugs.

This part is entirely correct. Better border security does literally nothing in the face of illegal trade. Imagine unironically thinking that a drug smuggler is going to use legal points of entry. By this reasoning we should also ask nicely (but firmly) that drug cartels register with the government so we know what they're up to.

You have to kill demand to destroy the illegal drug trade, and treatment is the most effective method of doing that. The US is one of the few first world nations that doesn't already have good treatment policies implemented, so naturally we have an enormous drug problem. We either toss an addict behind bars or implement half-measures like providing clean needles and micro doses with zero additional help.

You can't address drug addiction without addressing its causes. Everyone else already figured that out but Americans like wasting billions of tax dollars on federal prisons for some reason.

Worried-Ad2325

To tackle the fentanyl crisis, we need a balanced approach: bolstering border security to catch traffickers and increasing funding for addiction treatment and mental health services. Also, the US should work closely with Mexico and China to cut off the supply chain. Together, we can save lives and protect communities.

potusplus

If parents don’t stop abusing and neglecting their children, drug usage will never go away.

Apprehensive-Ad186

Everyone in the comments here saying to legalize drug use is crazy in my opinion. Legalizing a deadly substance never solved the problem ever. Let's not even talk about the half a million people cigarettes kill every single year. Look at alcohol alone as an example. Almost 180,000 people die from alcohol deaths per year in the USA and the truth is that it is probably even more than that. That's just booze. Alcohol isn't that deadly of a substance on its own as alcohol poisoning only makes up about 2,200 of those deaths. Now replace that with a drug that can very easily kill someone the first time they take it because of how potent it is.

The best answer to me is two fold. Two steps can make sure a vast majority of fentanyl deaths never happen. The first is proper education from a young age. Yes I know people give the DARE program shit all the time, and yes I know we already do this. We should triple our efforts however. Make rigorous study of drugs and the horrible deaths they cause a mandatory part of health classes around the country. This needs to extend outside of school though. The parents both need to be present and attentive to their children (even just this would drastically improve the drug problem). The whole community needs to be involved.

That first answer is one most people can agree is a good idea. This party is where people are going to hate me. We need to take the "war on drugs" literally. The USA, Mexico, and Canada should form a united coalition to protect the entirety of North America from the threat of these drugs. The southern border of Mexico is much smaller and would be easier to guard. The US and Mexican government get on a similar page and both work together to secure both borders. Once the travel of the drug cartels is as limited as possible is when the actual war would need to start. The spy power of the US government would absolutely be able to route out a large amount of drug cartels if we just had the cooperation of the Mexican government.

This step is much more complicated than simply air striking cartel labs and warehouses of course. It would also involve the US taking an extremely active role in assisting Mexico to build the proper infrastructure so as to not rely on the cartels and their money any longer. It's a sad truth that the Mexican economy is very heavily driven by the cartels. This would need to be fixed with the cooperation of the US and Canada. NAFTA was a plan that looked like a 8/10 plan on paper but the execution of it was pure garbage. The three countries would have to fully communicate and work out a realistic deal that would equally benefit all three members.

Humans have been seeking ways to alter their consciousnesses since the beginning of time.

The problems with fentanyl are that it is a particularly addictive way to accomplish that goal and it is quite easy to overdose on the stuff.

This is complicated by the fact that there are legitimate uses for fentanyl, so it makes sense to have legal fentanyl in a   limited capacity.

We have to accept that some people will use drugs.  We should isolate them so that they can inflict minimal harm on others while using and have options if they choose to get clean.  

(This does not mean providing housing.  Rather, this means requiring them to be in institutions that they cannot leave.)

We should accept that most of them won't get clean.  A lot of the fentanyl users will eventually OD.  The meth users can go for a long time deteriorating and becoming increasingly prone to symptoms that resemble schizophrenia.

I405CA

\[SS from the essay by Vanda Felbab-Brown, Director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.\]

Most of the world’s fentanyl and its precursor chemicals come from China or Mexico, countries whose current policies and priorities make effective control of fentanyl production very difficult. U.S. law enforcement cooperation with China, which was limited to begin with, has in recent years collapsed altogether. Absent a reset in U.S.-Chinese relations, that is unlikely to change. The Mexican government, too, has eviscerated law enforcement cooperation with the United States. Although a series of high-level bilateral meetings in April may have opened a path to increased cooperation down the line, it is far from clear if they will lead to substantive action from Mexican authorities.

But there is much more that the Biden administration can do. Washington still has unexplored options at its disposal to induce stronger cooperation from Chinese and Mexican authorities, for instance by combining constructive proposals with the threat of sanctions against state and private actors in those countries. It can also adopt additional intelligence and law enforcement measures of its own, with or without foreign cooperation. It is high time that Washington takes action on this front. If it does not, the record death rates that fentanyl is causing today will be eclipsed by even higher ones tomorrow.

ForeignAffairsMag

None of the solutions proposed in the article will work. The war on drugs is a dismal failure. After 53 years, isn't it time to try a new approach? Portugal has shown the way with complete decriminalization of all drugs. However, they have a robust social net, and in order for the US to follow their example, we would have to build one. That is anathema to the right.

In other words, in typical American fashion, the problem will have to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

jimgagnon

War on drugs was lost. Legalize them, spend 1/3 the cost of the war on rehab centers, the rest in schools and roads. Everyone wins. Except the cartels.

acrimonious_howard

Legalize opiates (and everything else) and make addiction a medical issue not a legal one. Addicts overdose on fentanyl because they don't know what they are getting. Best to give them what they need from a pharmacy and offer free detox programs on demand. However that means affordable universal health coverage which for some reason is only impossible in the US.

Sniflix

The obvious solution is to legalize drugs, produce them in the US, and regulate them. Prohibition makes drugs substantially more harmful because it artificially raises the price above what they would be in a free market. Thus people have to spend their entire paychecks to get their fix. If it was legalized the price would drop considerably, the majority of the money addicts spend on drugs could be diverted to housing and education. On top of that it's absurd to tell other people what they can and can't do with their bodies.

SenatorGengis

Maybe flooding the country w OXY while telling Americans it wasn’t addictive is the path to demand increasing for heroin &amp; fentanyl far cheaper drugs 

Demand = supply contrary to the GOP’s claims it’s the other way around -

Emotional-Coffee13

someday US will fail because it lacks of the audacity to face its own issue. How in the world pushing this on China solve any problem. Fentanyl was created and pushed by an American company that was essentially bailed out because they have massive influence on American politics.

blazer4ever

Going to say something you all hate… closed borders stop fentanyl, and Mexicans and anyone else who wants to enter illegally with illegal things.

What does the fentanyl crisis look like in China? Is this kind of like a reverse opium war?

gv111111

It’s just another avenue of war. Of course they won’t curb it and that is why this administration has not approached the idea. Proxy wars are fought in a lot of ways we as citizens do know know of or see.

ItsafrenchyThing

So fascism isn’t the only goal of a secure border?

littleweapon1

All but maybe 10% of Americans really don’t care. There is no stoping it. Look at LA and Hollywood. Totally homeless ran cities.

ajmase86

Fentanyl isn't made in America , and it isn't trafficked via Canada. The problem is Mexico, and the Democrats attitude towards securing our Southern border.

cewop93668

Unbelievable. Is everyone here so disconnected from the streets and what's happening around them that they can't see the truth? They've practically legalized drug use in the US. I know in California it's legal to have up to 30g of meth on you, so I'm assuming it's roughly the same with fentanyl. 

Now you combine that with police cuts, a revolving door policy on crime, and whatcha thinks gonna happen? People are getting off light for assault and murder, so why would drugs be any different? The border is wide open. You have a free flow of drugs into the US and no effective way to prosecute drug users. At this point it's almost like they're incentivizing people to become drug addicts. You're even more likely to get a disability check if you're an addict.

RadRandy2

My mother had cataract surgery for both eyes in last two months. For left eye we paid 0 (it was covered by indian government) for right eye we paid 200$ (inclusive lense ,medicine , 24 hours stay etc) because we opted for a swiss company’s lense.

North_Ad1125

Brasil kinda does this as well. When that dude back in 2015 made made the HIV medicine 5000% more expensive and people went crazy, here in Brasil the Brazilian government produced the same medicine for 20 cents and distribute it freely for citizens.

Gabriel_66

Yeah, I'm from the US and moved to Seoul and the exact same meds here are maybe 1/10 to 1/100 (or less) of the price. Name brands. Same exact meds. 

Don't even get me started on how there is an actual functioning health care system here unlike back in the US.

shanesnh1

https://preview.redd.it/zggl2wzrovcd1.jpeg?width=312&amp;format=pjpg&amp;auto=webp&amp;s=fef2e50d0c8c03ec6e3fc98c667839319bba805e

damn_dude7

I thought it said patients and was like whoa wtf

Various-Ducks

No shit, we pay less than 10% on insulin in Brazil compared to the USA, you can even get it for free if you don't have the money, health care in the USA is completely fucked up

faf-kun

In India they give patent for the process in which the medicine is produced not the medicine itself I.e. the compounds with which the medicine is prepared. So if an Indian company is able to reverse engineer the medicine production and produce it in different method they can get the patent.

New-Statistician6701

Sandpaper_Pants

cryd123

chris_dea

“Indian medical laws allowing breaking of capitalist stranglehold on medical care”

There, I fixed it for you.

bitbrat

Isn't big pharma one of the largest money makers ...if not THE largest money maker in the entire world (for the USA)?

simagus

Good for them. 

Anything to take money away from Big Pharma is a win in my book.

Organic_Physics_6881

Which is why we pay $10 for the same shit you pay a $1000 for. Imagine how fucked healthcare is in America lmao

Zucmymark

awesome. this is the type of shit we should be doing in America but the almighty dollar comes 1st.

DASreddituser

I appreciate her defining the country of India rather than my Indian takeaway having its own policies regarding drug patent law.

weeboots

There'll be an Indian kid on youtube giving out free tutorials for life saving drugs soon.

ZoNeS_v2

Western country putting tariff on medicine to protect western pharmaceutical compnay..

limpek2882

That sounds like a great policy the Indians have

bigchicago04

Jokes on them, not even westerners can afford western medicine anymore

MeepingMeep99

lush correct quickest wasteful sloppy existence run compare label homeless

 *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

Just so you guys know, they are not doing much R&amp;D for most of the drugs. US big pharmas make minor irrelevant changes to the drugs to renew the patent which should have expired.

There are several articles on this, you can google it. It's an unfair legal practice being abused by the big pharma in the US to ensure that they can squeeze out the profits out of the common folk. This was one of the key reasons that the Indian courts decided to give the rights to the Indian medical industries.

[https://prospect.org/health/2023-06-06-how-big-pharma-rigged-patent-system/](https://prospect.org/health/2023-06-06-how-big-pharma-rigged-patent-system/)

[https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/gaming-us-patent-system-keeping-drug-prices-sky-high-report-says-rcna47507](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/gaming-us-patent-system-keeping-drug-prices-sky-high-report-says-rcna47507)

[https://time.com/6257866/big-pharma-patent-abuse-drug-pricing-crisis/](https://time.com/6257866/big-pharma-patent-abuse-drug-pricing-crisis/)

&gt;At the root of our nation’s drug pricing crisis is the industry’s egregious abuse of a broken drug patent system. The U.S. patent system was originally designed to promote ingenuity and groundbreaking inventions by granting creators a limited monopoly period. When the system works as the Constitution intended, both industry and consumers benefit. Yet, somewhere along the way, drugmakers began manipulating the process to secure patents for simple tweaks to existing medicines, such as changing the way a drug is delivered or flavored. Big Pharma uses the patent system not to reward invention, but to block competition and extend lucrative monopolies.

&gt;This isn’t invention—it’s legal gamesmanship designed to bend and distort the rules to put profits ahead of patients. Drugmakers have realized it’s far easier to extend patent monopolies on existing drugs to stem losses from expiring patents than it is to invest in and invent groundbreaking new treatments to save lives. For decades, drug companies have been given carte blanche to systemically game the system by quietly obtaining patent after frivolous patent—often referred to as “patent thickets”—on many [blockbuster drugs](https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/blockbuster+drug). This wily maneuvering allows them to extend their monopolies far beyond the 20 years of patent protection intended by law and block lower-priced competitors from entering the market. It also gives them the power to extract [multimillion-dollar settlements](https://www.fiercepharma.com/manufacturing/bristol-myers-settles-sun-pharma-for-limited-revlimid-generic-launch-2022) in litigation from companies with would-be generic or biosimilar products.

&gt;A perfect poster child for undeserving patents is Regeneron’s product Eylea, which treats an eye condition known as macular degeneration that affects older adults. Eylea was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2011 and thanks to over 90 granted patents—including one for [minor adjustments to its sterile packaging](https://patents.google.com/patent/US11160918B2/en?oq=US11160918B2)—the drug is unlikely to see any generic competitors for years to come. Today, the list price for a single dose of Eylea in the U.S. is [over $1,800](https://www.cms.gov/medicare/medicare-part-b-drug-average-sales-price/2022-asp-drug-pricing-files), while it costs [roughly half that amount in the UK](https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes-medication/eylea.html).

It's basically US government not caring for their people because of the Big pharma lobby shooting down anything against them in the US.

GearlessJoe

So what they are saying is if you have a way of keeping the drug shelf stable, its a good idea to make a trip to India to purchase your drugs and get a years supply.  With flight and a decent hotel you will still be better off....

Salty_Replacement835

CEOs drug is for rich wealthy people. India's drug is for all human beings.

Conscious-Pickle-314

Good, medicine shouldn't be for profit in the first place

nick2k23

In India , there is something called Product Patent and Process Patent .

The final product has a patent .

The process through which the final product is arrived at is not patented. Indian manufacturers are free to produce the same drug through a different process. 

The drug is therefore available at a fraction of the price that  patients in the West pay to buy it . 

They once tried American-style price gouging in India through implementation of a law citing TRIPs etc . Did not work . Our Parliament did not pass it . The Bill wasn't even tabled in Parliament. 

Insulin costs much, much less than the price of an XBox (which, according to Reddit , is what US Citizens pay for their Insulin ). 

If the US Pharmaceutical Cartel allowed Indian made drugs to be sold in the US  , US Citizens would not be paying through their nose for their Health Insurance. 

P S: This is a layman's explanation.

WhatsInAName1507

Anyone who finds some loophole to buy medicine in India and sell it in America will get really rich.

Agentfyre

blacephalons

Based India, saving lives instead of filling deep pockets of Big pharma.

MrWrestling1

Absolute GIGACHAD move on India's part. TERACHAD even.

Fuck pharma.

Gretgor

Designed for Western patients who can afford it. Or in other words for sick rich people…

wambling-future

CriticalMassWealth

Chickenchowder55

Considering how US companies profited from violating European patents and copyrights in the late 1800's - I'd consider this poetic justice!

agreenmeany

I'm a pharmacy technician and I came her to say in all seriousness:

Good! More countries should do this! Flood the market!

If we get insulin down to where I don't see people walking fucking away without it then this is exactly what's needed to happen. Y'all smuggle this into us because damn it, I'm tired of seeing people on fixed incomes say they can't afford their meds.

BrokenDoveFlies

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