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GJS's avatar

Are the drug loads (measured as mg/1000 people/day) comparable across drugs? That is, does the same number for different drugs indicate the same consumption rate? I would think hyper potent ones like fentanyl would give much lower scores, because the dosage required for a comparable high is so small.

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David Clinton's avatar

The metrics are, apparently, the same for all drug loads. You're probably right that that could explain the fentanyl numbers.

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Robin Ford's avatar

Kind of curious about Ottawa. We so need more of this. In London UK some "ingredients" like birth control drugs don't get filtered out. We still don't really know the long term implications of that, PFAS, etc. How is Covid coming and going? (See Augie Ray's recent post on LinkedIn.) All this information and much more should be collected and made publicly and easily available. Stats Canada please keep going!

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John Chittick's avatar

Those are incredible stats, David. It's amazing that at an average street value of C$150 per gram for Cocaine, Montreal flushes approximately $150 x 2.2grams/1000 x 2,200,000 population or $726,000 per day worth of Cocaine down the drain. Extrapolated nationally that would amount to upwards of $10,000,000 per day. Conservatively assuming 10% waste (loss down the toilet), the 114 year old prohibition on Cocaine alone now represents roughly a $100,000,000 / day ($36.5 billion / year) business. That's about the same value as the export sales value of the auto sector.

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David Clinton's avatar

Interesting way to look at it. Assuming the stuff in the wastewater is still in a form that's usable, I wonder if there's a practical process available to recover enough of it to make for a viable (illegal) business model.

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John Chittick's avatar

Given the probable number of municipal politicians that already use the stuff, you would think they have already looked into it but my experience in municipal politics (three terms) was that most knew very little about how their public works operated. They were/are more interested in global climate salvation and more recently, land acknowledgements.

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Ian Dale's avatar

Food for thought, indeed.

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Yehuda Clinton's avatar

I heard somewhere that the reason Americans like the taste of IPA beer is because of all the SSRI's in the water supply

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GJS's avatar

SSRIs and high fructose corn syrup.

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