This is what a cult looks like: a perfectly reasonable article on the issue of cocaine in the waters causing issues with wildlife, ala cocaine bear, and then they had to drag ‘climate change’ into it because it’s required these days
Eels, Cocaine and Climate Change
This summer many media outlets smelled blood in the water and went on a feeding frenzy, publishing sensationalized reports about sharks getting high on cocaine off the coast of Florida.
The story originated with a Discovery Channel “Shark Week” program, which posited that odd, manic shark behavior observed off the Florida Keys originated after the predators consumed bales of cocaine dropped in the water by smugglers.
Shark scientists quickly debunked this theory by pointing out that sharks would only be attracted to cocaine if it smelled like meat, and that cocaine has never been found in wild sharks’ systems.
But cocaine in the water — that’s something we should still be afraid of. Only it’s not coming from bales of drugs dropped from the sky. It’s coming from human urine, the same way antidepressants and other pharmaceuticals end up in our sewers and waterways. (snip)
Eels regularly swim in waterways where cocaine has been detected, like the Thames River in London. Previous studies have detected the drug in eels’ systems, but Capaldo and her team wanted to find out exactly what that meant. They exposed young eels to levels of cocaine equivalent to those found in the environment (20 ng/L?1) for 30-50 days. (All experiments were conducted under ethical guidelines for animal experimentation.)
So, they force-fed the eels cocaine? I just have to wonder, is cocaine still that big of a drug these days? I don’t keep up with drugs (and, while I’ve tried coke a few times decades ago, I never cared for it), but, I’d think things like the growth of THC, CBD, and Fentanyl, among others, would be more of a concern as people urinate.
Capaldo points out that pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs are just one threat to European eels; climate change poses a danger to all eel species across the world. But the two threats remain linked, as temperature fluctuations can cause chemical interactions to change and become more toxic.
“All these findings would suggest that climate change, and in particular the rise in temperatures, could pose a problem for eels’ survival,” she says.
They really just cannot help themselves
And the problem is only going to get worse. Cocaine production increased another 35% between 2021 and 2022, according to a recent United Nations report. Meanwhile a commentary published this July in the Journal of Addiction Medicine predicts that climate change — and its resulting human suffering — will worsen the opioid epidemic and increase abuse of fentanyl, cocaine, and other legal and illegal stimulants.
I guess cocaine has increased. But, the rest is just pure cult, linking drug abuse to Hotcoldwetdry.
The article cited states: But the two threats remain linked, as temperature fluctuations can cause chemical interactions to change and become more toxic.
While it’s certainly true that chemical reactions are temperature dependent, this concern is a stretch.
We agree with Teach!!
Sounds to me like a university researcher just wanted a |”legit” reason to buy, use and store cocaine in his lab.
Imagine the research grant application that went with this. “We intend to feed cocaine to eels to see what happens”.