A 19-Year-Old Died After Taking ‘Gas Station Heroin’. His Mom Wonders Why It’s Still Being Sold Legally.
Johnathon Morrison's mother helped get tianeptine banned in Alabama. But she says it makes her “sick” it is still being sold in stores across the U.S.
Kristi Terry keeps replaying the last time she saw her son Johnathon Morrison alive.
The 19-year-old scholarship student came into her bedroom on the night of Feb. 20, 2019 and asked if it was OK if he cooked some pizza rolls; he didn't want to hog them from his younger sister, who was a fussy eater.
Terry, 41, and her husband found it odd that he was asking permission.
“We were like ‘you don’t have to ask to cook something," she said. In hindsight, she wishes she’d gotten up to see if he was feeling alright. She wonders if he was feeling sick at that point and was trying to settle his stomach with food.
The next morning Terry and her 15-year-old daughter found Morrison unresponsive in his bedroom in Trafford, Alabama. Paramedics spent an hour trying to revive him, but they couldn't. Next to his body was a half-eaten plate of pizza rolls and a nearly empty bottle of tianeptine pills, an unapproved drug known as “gas station heroin” because of its addictive effects on some users.
vape shops in the US sale it too sometimes
big issue here not just with tianeptine pills
most products in vape shops and gas stations are either fake and/or inferior quality and/or questionable
includes nicotine vape products, hemp selections, fake THC products, etcetera
unregulated and/or fake products are a huge problem in the US and are not being handled in the same way as other things in the marketplace
also some of these products are sold out of package individually with no food regulations (no handwashing with gloves or anything to do with food safety)
all this overshadows what could be a regulated market with lab tested and correctly dosed/portioned products sold at specifically licensed dispensaries with staff trained in these fields
at this point it is starting to look intentionally set up and kept like this to keep the population in a certain place
these products are also widely available in the US due to dealers catching on to the lower prices of these alternatives and due to the option of possibly getting this item or others mentioned online with overnight shipping sometimes being an option
Intentionally set up... well sort of in my opinion. All in all it is about money. Testing and what not cost a ton of money. And that would reduce what can be funneled to "other" places. It would also cost money to the people selling the crap. So that makes it politically unpopular. They don't need a nefarious agenda to do the wrong thing, they do that naturally.
It's a shit show either way. I remember when vaping started, it was pretty awesome that it was unregulated and a lot of experimentation, discussion and "consumer led" development.
The regulations and outright bans on vaping pushed by the WHO were and still are concessions to puritanical thinking (no harm reduction for smokers!) or support for nicotine replacement therapies (much less effective like patch). And of course they also lead to a few big companies being able to afford the regulations (big tobacco) now being able to compete against smaller companies (less competition).
But of course without any regulations, sooner or later you have other "big whatever" corporations pushing shitty unsafe products. And once money is flowing they will always lobby and capture the legislation to improve profit instead of competition or better quality or safer products.
Regulations are a major form of power that is very badly managed. The economic power / money behind this leads to major distortions and corruption. In many cases new ideology is being crafted by PR campaigns that have long term effects. We need to get some kind of democratic control into this, maybe like a fifth estate comprised of nerds that can act quickly and smartly and have no political or monetary incentive.