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The Mafia may be keeping fentanyl out of Italy

https://economist.com/europe/2026/09/24/the-mafia-may-be-keeping-fentanyl-out-of-italy
38•runeks•1h ago

Comments

LastTrain•35m ago
Or, they may not. TL;DR correlation is not causation.
schiffern•23m ago
Found the mafia. ;)

These comments are oddly common, but I've never understood the value of simply repeating the definition of uncertainty words like "may." Who is being informed here?

bnegreve•6m ago
Because not every correlation deserves to be published in the press. If you think about it, it is weird that they even make articles out of statements that only "may" be true.
mdp2021•3m ago
It is a matter of thresholds, of consequential bets over provisional non-trivial assessments, and of journalistic duty (taking note - the idea is not from the analyst but from sources).
jrflowers•23m ago
What do you think may means

edit: What do you think other people think that may means

LastTrain•9m ago
I think it means just that, which is why I used TL;DR? The article points out the correlation between mafia prevalence and lack of fentanyl overdoses and some speculation on whether those two things are connected.
vr46•20m ago
TL;DR: ‘Correlation is not causation’ does not mean ‘correlation tells us nothing about causation.’
mdp2021•17m ago
There is one "access free" paragraph in the page... "Police are coming to the conclusion".
hnrprtlpdb•34m ago
Did wastewater drug monitoring for a while, and the annoying bit was fentanyl metabolites sitting near the detection limit, so absence isn't proof.
dmos62•12m ago
Was that because there wasn't much fentanyl use or because fentanyl metabolites are somehow harder to detect?
vintermann•8m ago
I assume drugs that are potent in tiny quantities leave less metabolites.
vintermann•11m ago
From what I understand this uses overdose numbers. They should also not be assumed to be comparable across countries (recording practices vary widely), but if they tell the same story as wastewater monitoring there may be something to it.
glimshe•27m ago
"For years I paid my people extra so they wouldn't do that kind of business. Somebody comes to them and says, 'I have powders; if you put up three, four thousand dollar investment, we can make fifty thousand distributing.' So they can't resist. I want to control it as a business, to keep it respectable. I don't want it near schools! I don't want it sold to children! That's an infamia."

When AI can write screenplays like this one, then it's game over.

loopydosuette•15m ago
the internet is full of let-me-tell-you-a-quick-story like this one. so AI can and nothing is over, ma dude. nothing will ever be over.
dmos62•14m ago
Expand? This is part of plot to The Godfather. Not what you'd call exotic, I'd think?
aswegs8•25m ago
Feels like they caught up to internet archive being used to circumvent paywalls. Unfortunate.
Lucasoato•19m ago
Can anybody share a non-paywalled link?
bilekas•20m ago
I'm no expert, but I've always thought that adding much more risk to the lives of your customers unnecessarily is not good for business.
mdp2021•11m ago
Soon after John Stewart Mill we assessed that markets are not perfect.

Accelerations in the different directions of bounded incentives create as-if Brownian motions, - not the stability towards optimality of a perfect organic model.

Or: what you write is rational, but people are easily not... The supply side should disappear from the market when irrational, but changes are slow..

justonceokay•3m ago
When the risk is the benefit things get weird
pluc•19m ago
This was the way it worked up here (in QC) with the 81s. If you sold shit that could draw attention to you, your organization or suppliers, you were swiftly taught not to. They had decent quality control, but as their grip slipped so did quality. Now we get fentanyl overdoses weekly.
newsclues•8m ago
81 = Hells Angels

Who these days are more a front org for the CCP/triads who seem to be running much of the criminal underworld in Canada with their network of smuggling and money laundering.

My theory is that the CCP/triads leveraged drug addiction within the HA and killed anyone that objected, and everyone else got rich...

skrebbel•5m ago
I googled so y'all don't have to: "QC" means Quebec. 81 means Hell's Angels as per sister comment.

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