Meth doesn't have to be smoked, you can just eat the crystals orally, but meth abusers uusally don't do that because it's not nearly as fun.
The pills they're referring to, 30 M (https://www.drugs.com/imprints/30-m-8232.html), are oxycodone pills (a powerful opioid), but he's likely actually specifically referring to pressed fent (or fent analogue) pills that are made to look like real oxycodone pills. Or perhaps a mixture of meth and fentanyl, such as what George Floyd was taking the day he died (see https://interactive.kare11.com/pdfs/Autopsy_2020-3700_Floyd.... as well as the other evidence around the case)
There's a big problem where, now that the government has really cracked down on so-called "pill mills" - which like all of the war on drugs was the worst thing they could have done, because now the demand is being filled by fentanyl and fentanyl analogues that are pressed to look like oxy pills, but aren't. Oxy alone can be dangerous, but fent is another beast (particularly illicit).
As one anecdote I just had a friend-of-a-friend (I didn't know them personally) die of an overdose earlier this year. They took "oxys" orally which were actually pure fent analogue, and now they're dead. They are yet another fatality of the war on drugs (and also the war on COVID since the lockdowns were the proximate cause of them picking up their opioid habit again)
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Oh, and to elaborate on the GP's point about overdoses being the result of running out of meth, methamphetamine increases respiration rate, which will theoretically counteract the respiratory depression induced by opioids (which are how opioids always kill, with the one exception that fent and related analogues can possibly kill by an addition mechanism of action known as wooden chest syndrome)
Yeah that and the general inclusion of fent hotspots in Heroin and the like is why overdoes have skyrocketed over the last 5+ years. And then COVID [lockdowns] in my opinion cranked the growth in ODs even higher. It was growing at something like 11% in 2019 and then in 2020 it spiked like 30% to something like 70,000 overdose deaths in the US
From the context I assume he is talking about counterfeit pain pills (a M30 is an oxycodone pill) that are made with fentanyl (often in very high or uneven doses). Though counterfeit Adderall pills made with meth are now starting to show up.
Can you elaborate? I have no idea what this is about. I thought meth was smoked.