I wonder if anyone would do fentanyl if they could just go to the drugstore and get laudanum.
Drugs
This community is participating in a blackout against Lemmy for allowing free access to their API with no charge, rendering it affordable for third-party app developers to continue their services. The lack of prohibitive cost makes it easy to mod from mobile, promotes innovation, and gives unlimited user choice, and effectively opens up a significant portion of the culture we've all come to appreciate. Indeed, every third party app developer on Lemmy made essentially the same statement: "I don't have to shut down the app." Apps can also show ads which is a primary source of revenue. So not only do they not have to pay exorbitant fees, they can even mitigate those fees with ads.
Fentanyl became HUGE because when the USA gave control over Afghanistan back to the Taliban a condition was to stop all poppy (heroine) production. 80% of the worlds heroine came from Afghanistan. When that stopped, fentanyl was suddenly everywhere and heroine users started using that instead. I have a European friend who was addicted to heroine and he said that almost overnight the prices had doubled. I think it comes to no surprise that with the little money he had, he bought fentanyl instead. He was also very lucky that he had a huge tolerance for substances and didn't die when he took a wrong dose the first time.