
The Opioid Detection Challenge - 80mph
https://www.opioiddetectionchallenge.com/
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badloginagain
I can't see something like this actually addressing the root causes for the
opioid epidemic. In fact, I can only see this further criminalizing addicts- a
world where police can 'unobtrusively' detect opioids on a suspect further
marginalizes/stigmatizes these people.

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duado
One of the root causes is supply. The book Dreamland is a pretty thorough
explainer.

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lucisferre
But I would assume the receiver is the most likely to be caught by systems
like this and not the sender.

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sudosteph
Wow, they must be really desperate to think this was a good idea. Maybe it's
their last ditch effort to say "we tried everything" before petitioning for a
change of laws to open up more packages for inspection.

It's kinda silly, the only sample data is for positive detection of opiods
from xray images. They don't give you any examples of things that are false
positives or give you dimensions of the packages in the images or details on
what was actually in those xray images (like weight or something could be good
info?). So yeah, maybe you could set up some machine learning thing to be like
"ooh it looks like powder!" but they don't give you info about how long it
even takes to take those xray images or the size of those machines or how
frequently they get used currently, all of which are appear to be factors in
their selection process.

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Nasrudith
I thought the true purpose of it was the same as drug sniffing dogs - that
they don't want detection but search justification for fishing expeditions.

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gorkish
When much of the problem are people getting opioids directly from the pharmacy
what good is detecting it in the mail?

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refurb
Most of the opioids are from illicit sources. Or at least the opioids that are
killing people.

It’s a real challenge. 1 gram of fentanyl, which would be easy to disguise in
the mail, is equal to 10,000 doses.

Carfentanyl is 50-100x more potent.

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Sophistifunk
Prohibition is slavery, do not help these assholes.

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mythrwy
Prohibition might not be the best idea, but I can't see it being remotely
close to slavery.

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Latteland
Before I was aware of the opioid epidemic, I thought decriminalization was the
right thing, because it would remove the criminal element (or reduce it), stop
criminalizing users. I knew there were some drugs that were deadly. But
opioids and now fentanyl are so addictive, so destructive that I think I only
favor decriminalizing of less dangerous drugs.

Also the drugs are so powerful, it's yet another weapon of mass destruction -
kick some into the air system of a concert or airplanes, you could kill a huge
number of people.

I'd love to hear a rationale why decriminalization would make things better in
this world of opioids and fentanyl.

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codyb
I think what you’d want to do in a case like this is make legal the not WMD
strength stuff at affordable prices and constant purity.

The idea being that the heroin market could grow and reduce the demand for the
fentanyls and carfentanyls.

Hopefully the addicted would want the safer stuff, especially if it was at
similar prices or cheaper.

Then you tax it, and use the money raised for public awareness and education
to drive down the rate over time and offer out reach programs, counseling, and
rehab services to the people buying the stuff.

That seems like the sanest and most humane way to tackle both having these
extremely potent and dangerous substances flying through our mail system while
limiting damage over time, and helping as many as possible for whom they’ve
already become addicted or are on that path.

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Latteland
You lay out a reasonable position where it might work. I salute you. That
sounds reasonable and I could see that it might work. If it was cheap enough,
anyone could get a prescription, treatment was also available, then it would
drive down the price so much that there would be little incentive to use the
illegal stuff. Sell controllable amounts, that is better than random death,
plus random overdose.

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hluska
I hope this isn’t a stupid question, but what about dogs? Are dogs fast enough
for airports but too slow for mail?

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sudosteph
One of their reference links ([https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/05/25/written-
testimony-cbp-se...](https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/05/25/written-testimony-
cbp-senate-homeland-security-and-governmental-affairs-permanent)) does mention
that they are piloting a study to see if dogs can detect fetanyl, but I'm
guessing it's either not going great, or they just want to explore some other
options.

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kranner
Hopefully this doesn't mean they just killed a lot of dogs from inhaled
Fentanyl.

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b1r6
I will not work on this, because I see it as enabling the violation of our
constitution.

You cannot solve a demand-side problem by attempting to reduce the supply.

Market economies simply raise the price, attracting increasingly-devious
suppliers.

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otabdeveloper1
> You cannot solve a demand-side problem by attempting to reduce the supply.

Of course you can. Works perfectly well for rape and murder, for example. (As
well as for traffic violations, for that matter.)

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b1r6
I guess for me that is not clear-cut. Rapes still occur pretty often, and
many/most sadly aren't reported. (Legalizing prostitution could reduce them?)

For every traffic violation that is caught, a high multiple more fly by.
(Speeding, for example).

The demand for murder is so low that it's hard for me to conceptualize as a
market.

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icinnamon
If you’re interested in tackling challenges like these, we do this at a much
larger scale at Synapse Technology (gun/knife detection in X-ray images at
airports, schools, courthouses, etc). Feel free to reach out.

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mythrwy
How are people going to test their ideas?

Will they be passing out samples to test on?

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Latteland
I was thinking that too. I looked at the rules, nothing there.

