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I have a headache

March 9, 2023   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

Imagine going to the grocery store and buying one of your favourite products.

When it comes time to use it, you take off the cap and notice the tamper-proof seal is either missing or not properly in place.

Would you still use the product? Probably not. You would most likely toss it in the garbage or possibly return it to the store for a refund.  

With the seal not in place, you wouldn’t trust that the product is safe to consume.

It hasn’t been really all that long since regulations were put into place requiring manufacturers to package their products with tamper-proof seals.

Prior to the early 1980s, when you bought a bottle of ketchup, you simply unscrewed the lid and poured the contents on your hamburger. The thought that someone would take a bottle, place a toxic substance in it, then place the bottle back on a shelf for someone to buy was never thought of.

In Chicago, in 1982, a 12-year-old girl was given a Tylenol pill for cold symptoms. She went into immediate distress and died the next day.

The following day, six more people died after taking Tylenol. They all died from cyanide poisoning.

Health officials and police quickly realized the common link, and a call went out for people not to take Tylenol.

After eliminating the possibility of a problem at the manufacturing site, they concluded that someone had bought bottles of Tylenol, replaced the contents in the pills, and placed them back on store shelves for innocent people to buy.

The crime cost companies millions of dollars as products had to be pulled off the shelf across the continent, and very few people at the time wanted to risk buying a bottle of Tylenol that could potentially contain a lethal dose of cyanide.

No one was ever arrested or convicted of the crime.

There were hundreds of copycat cases of this ridiculous crime as other nutjobs decided to follow suit.

Manufacturers were quick to start marketing their products with tamper-proof seals to avoid this happening again.

It was one of those crimes until it happened no normal person would think of or consider.

It is the same with mass shootings. Until a psycho took the elevator to the top of the main tower at the University of Texas and used his marine sharpshooting skills to kill 17 and wound 31 people, the thought of a maniac indiscriminately murdering people was unheard of. Now, it’s pretty much commonplace in the U.S.

The OPP has issued a new statement about a dangerous strain of opioids being used in Ontario. Both fentanyl and carfentanil have caused the overdose deaths of a number of people.

While quite often we associate drug overdoses with habitual illicit and illegal drug users, the truth is, many of those deaths have occurred to regular people who were offered a little bit recreationlly at a party and paid the ultimate price.

I don’t recommend taking any kind of narcotic that isn’t prescribed by a qualified doctor for a specific reason.

Some people just get caught up in a party situation and are offered something to lighten the party atmosphere, and the next thing you know, they aren’t breathing.

Both fentanyl and carfentanil are extremely potent synthetic opioids that are cooked up in secret labs with the drug mixed into other drugs, and usually unknown to the user.

One intrepid journalist tracked down one of these drug lab cookers on the west coast and requested an interview that allowed the drug maker to remain anonymous.

When asked if he felt any responsibility for putting a substance on the street that kills people, his reply was “I don’t make them take it.”

He felt no guilt at all, even though the stuff he was cooking and selling, and making a profit with, was killing many people.

When you mix a potentially lethal drug with another drug, you are creating a cocktail with deadly consequences. It’s no different than slipping a single cyanide pill into a bottle of aspirin and waiting to see what happens when a person has a headache and reaches for a pill for some relief.

Catching these drug cookers is not easy. There’s a whole chain of supply that police must go through.

But when caught, they should be held accountable for the carnage they are creating across the country and receive a sentence that reflects the severity of their actions.

There are too many families that have lost loved ones to this opioid crisis.


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