Finnish drug abuse deaths
This is interesting - Last year, illegal drugs were found in the blood of 88 deceased Finns who died under the age of 30. However, not a single death was recorded in Finland due to heroin overdose. Yet, the taxpayer-funded and state-issued buprenorphine drug for opiate dependence was the biggest killer. So maybe if they would have stuck to heroin instead of going into detox, they’d still be alive?
Last year evidence of illicit drugs was found in the blood of 88 deceased Finns who died under the age of 30. The most common finding was of buprenorphine, while not a single case of a heroin overdose fatality was registered. Buprenorphine is used for the treatment of opiate dependence. One preparation, Subutex, has been widely abused by addicts.
ROUNDUP: Finnish customs seized 37 000 Subutex pills in 2003
9.3.2004 at 16:53
Finnish customs seized a record amount of the narcotic substance Subutex last year, the National Customs Board (NCB) said Tuesday.
Customs officers seized over 37,000 pills in 2003, double the number of pills seized in 2002, according to NCB.
The Subutex originates mainly from France and Estonia, where it can be bought over the counter.
Less hasis, heroin and amphetamine and ecstacy were confiscated last year than a year earlier.
Estonian crime leagues also play a major role in smuggling drugs to Finland. Drugs are brought via the sea link between Finland and Estonia as well as especially via Sweden and the Ã…land Island.
However, the drug trafficing trade is being penetrated by the Russians as well. The Finnish customs and police authorities consider the narcotic situation in the Eastern neighbour gravely serious.
“The situation is bad in the vicinity of the border [with Russia] where both consumption and production of opiates and amphetamine are rampant. In addition, the Russians are rather professional in drug trafficing”, Tuija Hietaniemi, Special Investigator of the Central Criminal Police describes.
/STT/
© Copyright STT 2005
Comment by Hank W. — Mon, Oct 31st, 2005 @ 2:04 pm
So its not detox - its because they sell it in the supermarket in France.
Comment by Hank W. — Mon, Oct 31st, 2005 @ 2:04 pm
Look, these so called “drug related deaths” are bogus. The number - 88 - is only slightly higher than would be the expected value if drugs had a positive impact on mortality. See for yourself: http://www2.helsinginsanomat.fi/english/archive/news.asp?id=20030509IE3
Now, given that people tend to lie in these questionaires, and the obvious drug-related hazards like having to deal with criminals and being subjected to all sorts of humiliation by the society, drug users are surprisingly safe in Finland.
Mind you, that the number is calculated by doing a tox-screen on the deceased and if the qualitative screen is positive, the death is then categorized as “drug death”. Young people die mostly by suicide and car accidents, not surprisingly, many of these are labelled “drug deaths” even when drugs had very little or nothing to do with the deaths. This is simply a misrepresentation of facts.
Buprenorfine ODs don’t happen, because per se, that drug basically cannot kill you. It is not toxic and it doesn’t have the usual dose-response curve of opiates, instead, it starts to act as an antagonist when you take too much of it. The fact that people are using BPN instead of heroin is, basically, a very good thing. The bad thing about it is, that BPN is out there on the streets and being used by people who would not otherwise be doing drugs. I know a few people that are addicted to this stuff and it’s no picnic, I can tell by looking at them. And also, a lot of people are shooting BPN, which is completely retarded, as it has all sorts of stuff like corn starch that clots up your veins.
And look, detox is one thing, maintenance quite another. Detox means going clean. They don’t do that in Finland even for patients that would prefer it. If you go to treatment, they force that stuff on you, sometimes in doses that are bigger than those that you did before getting treatment!
Comment by Tiedemies — Mon, Oct 31st, 2005 @ 2:37 pm
“The bad thing about it is, that BPN is out there on the streets and being used by people who would not otherwise be doing drugs”
Sure, because it is sold in stores in Tallinn over the counter, so it must be safe, just like the aspirin.
Would making it an over the counter drug in Finland reduce this problem. If I understood correctly from the last drug thread, that’s exactly how you would approach reducing these deaths.
Am I responsible for these deaths too?
Comment by Fred Fry — Mon, Oct 31st, 2005 @ 4:22 pm
Did STT really say that Subutex (Buprenorphine) is sold over the counter in France and Estonia? What a canard! While it is legally available, I am quite sure that prescriptions are required in both countries.
Estonia recently adopted a policy of not allowing doctors to prescribe it to foreign residents, and now Finnish addicts take package tours to a border town in Latvia, where an obliging clinic will accommodate them.
Comment by Kimmo W — Mon, Oct 31st, 2005 @ 5:44 pm
In a sadly related note:
Alcohol-related deaths in Finland jump 20 pct
“The number of alcohol-related deaths leapt a record 20 percent in Finland last year, comprising one-third of all deaths among men aged 45 to 49, the national statistics agency said.”
Comment by Fred Fry — Mon, Oct 31st, 2005 @ 8:57 pm
“drug related deaths†and “alcohol related deaths”;
Isn’t it a little bit naive to implicate that these are two different things? Alcohol is a drug too.
88 vs. 1,860 deaths
It seems to me that Finland needs to be educated about drugs, especially students.
Unbelievable that people are still putting crap like heroin and chemicals on the same page as marihuana.
Death related to pot smoking would mean that one has to smoke so much of the stuff that one would sooner die of lungcancer.
Which is a missing statistics of ANOTHER state sponsored drugs, tabacco/nicotine. Which is a HARD drug.
Comment by Walter — Mon, Oct 31st, 2005 @ 10:33 pm
So it is a lot of storm about nothing; or it is because young adults will try everything they can get their hands on becasue they have been taught that ‘it is all equally bad’
Comment by Walter — Mon, Oct 31st, 2005 @ 10:36 pm
Heroin for all! stupid.
Comment by Anonymous — Tue, Nov 1st, 2005 @ 12:28 am
Well, you have to look beyond the numbers to see what is happening here. There wasn’t a single OD for BPN, as far as I can tell. I don’t know if over the counter sales of BPN would make much sense, but as it stands, you can get pharma-grade BPN for a lot cheaper and safer than heroin, so yes, all in all, Finland is way better off than it would, if BPN was not available from France and Latvia.
The thing is, many, if not most, of these 88 drug related deaths would have taken place even without drugs. This is because the expected number of deaths in drug users would not be much less than 88 even if drugs didn’t cause any kind of rise in mortality. Your death is put in this category if you are a passenger in a fatal car crash, if you did drugs two weeks before.
I fail to see the point in Freds rant. Many of these deaths are, by the way, suicides. BPN takes several days to disappear. Chances are, a lot of these deaths are suicides that happen because people are desperate. Desperate, because the prohibitionist hate-mongers prevent them from re-entering a productive life.
Comment by Tiedemies — Tue, Nov 1st, 2005 @ 2:12 pm
Hmm, I would not exactly call drugs illegal in California:
Boomers’ Overdose Deaths Up Markedly
“Baby boomers are the first generation that is facing a drug and overdose epidemic in their middle age,” said John Newmeyer, epidemiologist and drug researcher at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinics in San Francisco. “They started using drugs recreationally or regularly over 20 years ago, and they aren’t really slowing down.”
To a degree, it seems overdoses are following the same generation through time. In California, the age at which someone was most likely to die from a drug overdose in 1970 was 22; by 1985, it was 32; and today it is 43, according to calculations by Males, based on state health data.
Many of those who die are hard-core drug users who never quit, even when they reached middle age.
As such, they are likely to be in poor health, enhancing their overdose risk.
“…”Using year after year can have a clear and deleterious physical effect. [Drugs] take a toll as people continue to use,” said Dr. Karl Sporer, a San Francisco emergency room physician and drug treatment expert. ”
“…With age, even occasional users grow more susceptible to medical complications such as strokes, heart attacks and respiratory distress. ”
Interesting article.
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