Or a reference to oxidation, the process by which rust is formed…

Not only, but the opioid crisis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_United_..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid_epidemic_in_the_United_...) is still something pretty specific to the United States, so you can't automatically assume that developers from other countries (I'm going by the author's name here because I wasn't able to find other information about him) will be familiar with the street names of various opioids...

The implication of being too nerdy would be that they are extremely well-versed in fantasy, science fiction and/or anime as well as random niche topics. They would probably read or watch way more culture things than you or me, just the kind that deals with current societal issues by allegory and thus wouldn't use real-world street names for drugs

Not that I think that that's a fair conclusion to jump through. Occam's razor would prefer "they were probably vaguely aware and didn't care". Just like how Torvalds knowingly named git after a slang word for a stupid person

Sure, those things are orthogonal to each other.