slop ecology

When a heroin addict unknowingly overdoses on fentanyl, who do you blame?One school of thought blames the user. They made an irresponsible choice, and this was the consequence of their action—but they may not have had full control over their decisions, and they certainly didn’t have full awareness of what they were consuming.Many people instead blame the drug dealer who cut the heroin. They’re the culprit, they committed the horrible act—but I’m sure the dealer would prefer their customer to stay alive. If the cost of heroin were the same as the cost of fentanyl, they’d rather distribute the safer product their customer actually wanted.Maybe the problem is the fentanyl itself: the fact that there is a highly dangerous, cheaper alternative to heroin. The opioid literally killed the user, and its lower costs incentivized the dealer to act recklessly. And yet to focus entirely on fentanyl is to ignore each person’s agency in the situation, and the mechanisms that distributed the drug in…