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

58•runeks•1h ago

Comments

LastTrain•57m ago

Or, they may not. TL;DR correlation is not causation.

schiffern•45m 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•29m ago

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•26m 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; journalists take note that sources made statements).

Analysts work speculatively. And the results of the speculation are not trivial when supported by strong elements.

jrflowers•45m ago

What do you think may means

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

LastTrain•32m 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.

mdp2021•12m ago

> speculation

Not any speculation but educated guesses from knowledgeable people.

vr46•43m ago

TL;DR: ‘Correlation is not causation’ does not mean ‘correlation tells us nothing about causation.’

mdp2021•39m ago

There is one "access free" paragraph in the page... "Police are coming to the conclusion".

hnrprtlpdb•56m 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•35m ago

Was that because there wasn't much fentanyl use or because fentanyl metabolites are somehow harder to detect?

vintermann•31m ago

I assume drugs that are potent in tiny quantities leave less metabolites.

vintermann•34m 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.

artisinal•16m ago

Does wastewater drug monitoring account / offset for constipation caused by drug use?

There isn't anything to measure if the poop is unable to leave the end-user.

glimshe•50m 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•38m 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•36m ago

Expand? This is part of plot to The Godfather. Not what you'd call exotic, I'd think?

glimshe•5m ago

It's just considered one of the best movies and screenplays of all time. My quote is a relevant line in said movie.

aswegs8•48m ago

Feels like they caught up to internet archive being used to circumvent paywalls. Unfortunate.

Lucasoato•42m ago

Can anybody share a non-paywalled link?

bilekas•42m 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•34m 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..

UpsideDownRide•11m ago

Did we? Because while seemingly obvious nowadays it is not a settled matter in orthodox econ academia.

justonceokay•26m ago

When the risk is the benefit things get weird

thefz•25m ago

They still traffic heroin though, which is not stellar for customer's life expectancy.

dfxm12•25m ago

Tell this to junk food manufacturers...

pluc•42m 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•31m 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...

pluc•21m ago

There's been a criminal civil war raging between HAs and every other smaller org that wants to expand (look at Blood Family Mafia specifically, Arab Power as well). HAs have lost some feathers in pretty gruesome ways. They're all older and neglected to replenish the ranks in order to preserve prestige. Street gangs didn't. If I'm competing in that world, I'm funding the underdogs until leadership trembles, then we make a deal. I believe we're at that point now. All those groups - including the Sicilians - have all been slowly invalidated and Angels are appearing more stable/powerful these days (even though we just outlawed their colours - but even that gives them prestige).

newsclues•4m ago

Montreal and Quebec is only one part of the criminal world in Canada.

Ontario is different, East Coast is different, prairies are different and the West Coast is it's own beast.

HA uses puppet gangs, so while their power may be diminished, they are still lurking in the background, as key nodes for drugs, money and guns.

The power lost by the HA and traditional mafia has largely been taken over by CCP/triads groups. The Indian and Iranian OC are under the Chinese, who have deep into the government and economy as major developers. Read Sam Cooper.

be8e9dmrro•23m ago

Why not goverment "is keeping fentanyl out of italy"?

If you would sell unaproved medication during covid, you would get several years in prison.

Why someone who sells unapproved medication without prescription, gets released and can keep selling this stuff? Medication thst kills people!!!

genericacct•23m ago

I'm afraid some crime syndicates have found out they can just steal it from hospitals, some 80 vials went missing from the ospedale israelitico in Rome during the summer and there are already reports of an increase of users in the outskirts of the city..

dotcoma•15m ago

And who is keeping it out of the other European countries?

qoez•14m ago

I always assumed this was an america-only drug that no one actually does or at least not to the excess that it's claimed by the publications using it for the normal fear journalism purposes.

0xbadcafebee•6m ago

[delayed]

lawgimenez•12m ago

From what I’ve read online Ndrangheta are much more powerful than the mafia in Italy.

pvaldes•2m ago

[delayed]

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