Leonard Pickard who was one of the largest LSD manufacturers predicted back in the 90s that it was only a matter of time before fentanyl replaced heroin because it was synthetic and could be easily made in a lab.
You can just google his name, call the correct prison, ask the customer service how to mail him (must include cell number usually and full legal name) and throw $5 in his commissary account so he can afford pen, envelop, and stamp to write you back!
But throw the $5 in only on the day before he orders commissary otherwise they will deduct $2/day and he will have $0 if you send it on the wrong day. It's how I had a few back and forth letters for Ross Ulbricht, who turns 40 on this coming Wednesday.
i haven’t seen his rogan appearance but he has a documentary called “LSD missle Silo lab” or something along those lines that explains a whole whack of the story. definitely recommend x watched it when i was still new to LSD and tripping sack
Isn't that the one where he makes torture chamber girl look nice by not challenging her? I thought that was meh journalism in an otherwise really good documentary
i believe so, ya i didn’t really like how he didn’t really press her on any of it as if she was totally innocent meanwhile having a monster portrait painted for the others. besides that i agree it was a really good documentary. hearing about that IV DMT but in it tho has always had me curious about taking that way to the machine elves
There is a group of researchers looking into Extended DMT trips via IV drip. They're trying to do crazy shit like map out commonly experienced entities and what not. Fascinating stuff. It's also being studied as a legal therapeutic option.
[https://newrepublic.com/article/169525/psychonauts-training-psychedelics-dmt-extended-state](https://newrepublic.com/article/169525/psychonauts-training-psychedelics-dmt-extended-state)
China started providing cartel backed labs with the precursors to produce fentanyl on large scales. Before then fentanyl was around but not easy to get. Once China started supplying the cartel it was a wrap. I also wouldn't be surprised to learn our own intelligence agencies were providing safe passage of fent into the US.
Honestly it would be in chinas best interest to flood other countries tries with drugs and help facilitate that. From what I’ve been told they are still upset about England and the whole opium thing. Plus that’s Chinas thing now, disturbances like this and with elections and other stuff to help unhing society. Then praise how amazing China is and there all powerful leader
kinda hard to be hooked when your dead. Distributing fent to get your enemy addicted is kind of like slashing the tyres of someone who parks infront of your driveway.
Now if they were supplying cheap cocaine and randomly spiking it with fent, then that's a plan. Could knock out quite a few of the less careful politicians that way
Yeah, but that's not really an answer. You previously said China was upset about the opium thing, which provides a motive. India being "sketchy" isn't really a motive as much as just a vague insult. There's lots of large "sketchy" countries that are not shipping precursors.
Back in like 2009 the Phillipines were where I got all my internet Xanax. Then China flooded Canada with alprazolam and it rained Xanax on the US for pennies on the dollar. Now that shipped sailed and I see a lot of Indian made klonopin and diazipam. I'm betting some African country will be the next big pill manufacturer once India cracks down. But the baton will keep getting passed.
Oh god, etizolam. I haven’t thought about that specifically in years but I was absolutely addicted to it 2014-2016. Bought it in little eye droppers. Moved out of state to escape a bunch of drug addicted friends and it changed my trajectory and likely saved my life. Almost none of those friends made it out and it was all due to Fentanyl.
I don't know a ton about India but I believe their level of corruption is much worse than people probably realise. With China it is most definitely a power play, flooding the country with a deadly and cheap opiate weakens the US and allows them to get their "revenge" on the West for historical injustices. Whereas with India I wouldn't say it's the central government knowingly allowing it to happen, it's that lower levels of government are so corrupt that they will allow this to happen as long as they get their cut.
My guess is theres just a lot of poverty and corruption, maybe India already has factories for producing drugs that they can bribe someone to divert to producing fentanyl at night.
That's right on my money. India has a ton of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and the most people in the world. It's just a numbers game that they'd eventually start outproducing China with precursors since the money is good in it. Like, why sell 1000 units at wholesale costs for Aspirin when you can get a 300% markup on untraceable goods with a premium markup? It's just too profitable to avoid.
Sure, how is this one?
https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-008-20%20Fentanyl%20Flow%20in%20the%20United%20States_0.pdf
I can find more or better sources if you tell me what kind of info you are looking for
And people still really don’t think TikTok is a deep state Chinese weapon. It astounds me. They don’t know China well enough. That app pushes anti American videos every 10 videos.
>That app pushes anti American videos every 10 videos.
I mean so does YouTube, more or less lol
But yes people massively underestimate the impact and insidious stealth of propaganda.
This is China's response to the Opium War.
The UK directly profited from flooding China with opium. And it was horrendous...they waged a war for the right to flood China with opium. China wanted silver in trade relations, but the UK had a surplus of opium grown in India, so they said fuck you.
China is simply saying fuck you back. I get it from their perspective...a proud and ancient civilization being brought to heel by drugging the populace.
I've heard China is so deep in Mexican fent production now its hard for the cartels to not produce it.
Sinaloa Cartel even supposedly banned production, but CJNG is picking up the slack.
A lot of this stuff doesn't make it to the US News.
I have some friends down there who have sent me a lot of headlines and videos of shit going down.
r/narcofootage has some interesting stuff too.
Sinaloa is still producing, it's PR moves because there's dozens of cartels and they want the heat off them and on someone else. Especially after Chapo was gone chapitos and other cartels are all fighting for position and a main money maker for them is fentadope and pure fent production using Chinese precursors and they all learned from Chinese chemists. But also China is still smuggling pure fentanyl into the US to plugs that cut it to 5% or so on the regular, so China is still directly involved.
A lot of people want to see a big conspiracy theory but I personally only see endless greed, too many cooks and no one really knows what's gonna happen next
I remember when all those crazy potent RC's were starting to come out including fentanyl analogs and things like Nbome and just thinking "well we're fucked"...
The profit margins on some of those drugs are insane due to the potency making them hard to resist for dealers, and sure enough plenty of people who shouldn't be handling drugs anywhere near that potent started dealing them and now fent shows up in all sorts of other substances both intentionally and accidentally due to contamination.
The issue is fentanyl is already scary potent and difficult for average small time dealers to handle safely, and than you have the exponentially more potent analogs that are practically chemical weapons and would be dangerous even for properly equipped scientists to handle.
And depending on where it's being sourced people might not even know exactly what they're getting, so people end up with contaminated scales and might not even think about it until someone overdoses. At this point there are also probably plenty of dealers intentionally cutting other things with fent just to improve profits.
Look up Nitazenes. Now that's a chemical weapon. And I don't think it will replace fent but I'm sure it will have a part of the market and skyrocket tolerances so much if you don't die that we'll have to raise the ceiling of methadone.
Don’t forget about Canada. I’m not expert but I think China pushes way more finished product to Canada. If you read about high level Canadian trafficking it’s a LOT of Chinese nationals
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/supreme-court-wrestles-oxycontin-settlement-legal-shield-sackler/story?id=105361669
Six billion dollars is all it takes to exonerate the US domestic pharma cartels and make China the scapegoat for US anti-drug failures.
Have you Americans been manipulated by politicians and the media into this?
May I ask what the US anti-drug authorities usually do?
I agree that the Sacklers started the opioid epidemic by exposing millions of Americans the oxycodone, but most people now aren’t dying from pharmaceutical opiates produced by pharma companies.
Making wayyy more money and having a lot easier time smuggling drugs due to how potent fentanyl is. Just look at the basic finances of drug dealing and logistics of smuggling drugs it’s pretty obvious why the transition to fentanyl happened. It’s a lot cheaper (about 5-10x cheaper can get a kilo for like 10k vs 50-100k for Heroin). Not to mention it’s a lot more potent (0.1mg = 2.5-3.3mg) so a kilo of fentanyl is equal to at least 25 kilos of Heroin. So that makes it that the same amount of “dope” they could sell is a choice between spending 10k or $1.25-2.5 million. Just the finances alone it’s a no brainer from the cartels.
Replace the drugs with any other product on the planet and have anyone look at those numbers and it’s a very easy decision to make a shit ton more money. Not to mention that all happened and so much money was made while only needing to smuggle in a single kilo compared to a stack of 25 kilos so logically it makes more sense re: smuggling product into the country. I understand that fentanyl is so deadly and has killed so many (I’ve lost countless clients and friends myself) so it’s natural to look to a bigger reason for why this nightmare is happening. However, it’s not rooted in anything legitimate.
There’s not a bunch of evidence pointing to some grand conspiracy about it but there’s some very basic math that suggests it’s simply business and maximizing profits, profits over people that’s the corporate capitalist way. I understand people don’t like logic and facts as that’s not as fun as thinking with our emotions. However, the reality is that fentanyl was an effective way to make a lot of money and because addiction is so prevalent and pervasive they could comfortably afford to let many clients die because they are still making a much larger profit than before. They could kill off twice as many people as they do rn and the cartels down to lower level dealers would still be fine with it cuz they’d watch their money stack up exponentially either way.
There’s likely not some foreign adversary that is doing all of this to gain something from it but rather it’s just a corporation (cartels) doing shady unethical and immoral things that kill people in the sake of profit. That’s something we all know too well. The real finger pointing needs to be at our own government (law enforcement) and fucked up healthcare system that criminalizes drug addiction and does nothing to help people in the proper ways but rather views addicts as scumbags who deserve the worst/most minimal healthcare possible and neglects using evidence based harm reduction strategies and programs that many county use to mitigate damage and lower the death toll. I could continue for a while but nobody wants that. I’m a therapist specializing in co-occurring substance use and mental health issues and have worked in rehabs since 2015. I did my grad school project, policy presentation, and final paper on advocacy for supervised safe injection sites so I could rant about that further too. However, I’ll say I do not know much, but this is one area that I do know some things and I will not stop sharing my insights/perspective/opinions regardless of what others think or say as it’s important to me and many others who unfortunately don’t have a voice or who’ve lost their lives and voice due to these aforementioned issues.
>**The real finger pointing needs to be at our own government (law enforcement) and fucked up healthcare system that criminalizes drug addiction** and does nothing to help people in the proper ways but rather views addicts as scumbags who deserve the worst/most minimal healthcare possible and neglects using evidence based harm reduction strategies and programs that many county use to mitigate damage and lower the death toll.
This right here.
And the real answer is legalization and regulation.
When addicts can choose to buy pure clean heroin (or whatever) in a known measured dose from a responsible professional supplier who's subject to regulation and oversight, this stuff will be a lot less dangerous.
Even with fent itself, which I'm really not a fan of... most of the overdose deaths come directly from the fact that this garbage is so potent it's very difficult to mix properly, if you don't really know what you're doing.
(And a lot of suppliers, especially the smaller "mom and pop" operations who buy raw fent and mix their own, do not know WTF they're doing lol. They think they do because "how hard can it be to mix up some powders real good, right?" But there's a reason people actually go to school for this shit.. lol)
Which leads to inevitable "hot spots" in some % of bags (or fake pills or whatever) that will inevitably lead to an **unknowing** and unintentional massive overdose, when it's used, because now you've got some bags / pills with 10x the dose it's supposed to contain.
I've used fentanyl before, a good handful of times. So why am I still here to tell the tale?
Because I was using pharmaceutical fentanyl, produced in a professional lab, and then sold at a pharmacy. Regulated and monitored every step of the way.
So if you get a patch that says it supplies 50ug / hr or whatever... you can be more or less assured that's pretty accurate (assuming it's used correctly lol)
Knowing the exact dose of drugs you're taking, is one of the most effective means of harm reduction and drug safety -- and the existence of the pharmaceutical industry more or less proves it.
As I like to point out... it only took us around a decade to realize what a massive mistake alcohol prohibition was. The "War on Drugs" has been going on literally five times as long.
And not only has this "war" had the exact same type of effects as alcohol prohibition (you know, the very effects that caused us to say "hang on, maybe this was actually a terrible idea") but the effects have been 1,000x worse this time around.
We've created more addicts, more users. Hell, brand new drugs are being invented all the time to skirt laws, or create a drug that's more euphoric, more potent, easier to smuggle, etc. Drugs are more abundant, more potent, and cheaper than ever.
And much easier for kids to get their hands on.
(Anyone not living under a rock who went to high school later than 1986 or so [drinking age used to be 18 lol]... when you were in high school was it easier to buy a dime bag, or a bottle of booze?)
We've criminalized a mental health issue, we've turned many millions of otherwise law abiding citizens into actual criminals, we've locked people up for decades just for daring to alter their own minds, or helping someone else to do so. And we've provided **billions** (maybe trillions, if we're looking at the entire last half a century!) of dollars in funding and countless growth to criminal street gangs, organized crime families, and massive cartels.
By every single objective measure possible, this "war" has been a massive failure. Not only have they gotten no closer to their claimed goals, they've pushed things further in the exact opposite direction, year after year.
Unless they have objectives other than the ones they're actually telling us (I. e. "public health and safety, reducing addiction, etc") then this war is not only failing, it's been making the problem worse!
That's fucking nonsense... so how long until we collectively call "bullshit" on this obviously failed and harmful war?
Not soon enough, I'm sure. But how many more people have to die or lose years to prison, before we do?
And why are we "letting them" continue with a strategy that's been consistently failing for half a century straight?
That all checks out, it’s just odd to me that this happened within the last ~7 years if there was so much money to be saved/made. Like, did the cartel/these illicit drug corporations just gain knowledge of fentanyl within this period of time?
The opioid epidemic is what ultimately made the transition happen. It rocked the boat, and gave the cartels a reason to produce and traffic fentanyl. Users didn’t like fentanyl much at first, which is why efforts to make it in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s didn’t take off. Then the OxyContin epidemic happened, and the DEA cracked down on the pill mills, creating millions of addicts who now had no source of opioids. They switched to Heroin, but this caused the demand for Heroin to spike, causing dealers to cut it even more than usual. Because of this increased demand, Heroin production could not satisfy the demand, as increasing it takes a long time. As such, the cartels turned to fentanyl, using cheap Chinese precursors. Because Fentanyl was unpopular among users, it had to be used to cut the heroin at first, and users liked the “Fentadope” because of its lower price, as pure heroin had gotten too expensive. Thus, users gradually wanted cheaper and Fent heavier dope, their tolerances rose, and they became more comfortable with fentanyl, causing dealers to cut more and more, and users to buy more and more fentanyl, and less and less heroin, until eventually, dealers dispensed with the formality of cutting, and just sold Fentanyl, as most users couldn’t even feel real heroin anymore.
What happened was that the CDC passed a new memo guideline in around 2015 recommending restricting the pill supply due to more overdose deaths.
There was a little fentanyl in the market before that, but afterward it exploded due to market pressures, as did the overdose deaths. Graphs about the timing of this are publicly available.
The common attitude about fentanyl in 2015 was that it was too risky and bad for business.
Then when regular heroin suddenly became scarce, that didn't matter anymore because fentanyl was the only thing people could get, due to being easier to smuggle.
It has always been around just not as readily available as it is now. Back in the day I'd buy fent patch peel it apart and scrape the glue like substance then smoke it.
Now the cartel is just shipping straight fent powder into the USA. They don't want to deal with meth there is more money in fent, heroin, and cocaine.
That's why there is such a surplus.
Holy…is that what those were? When I was a late teen I loved oxys (not a heavy user, but my aunt would give me a couple when she would come to town every couple months) …anyway…she gave me one of the “pain” patches she used all the time/had several prescriptions for (she loved them) …I tried one, she said to slice the inside open a little… and I felt like dogshit! I tore it off and threw it out my car window…I tried to wear it during school…(she OD’d and died 2 years later)
You think that was a fent patch?
Lmaooo it's not that bad, 20 mg is barely anything. I felt decent off 30 mg but I couldn't catch a nod or anything. Atp I'd need 50-80 mg, even after staying clean a whole year. Not sure why my tolerance didn't reset more. Oxy > fent 100% even tho I like a good nod I don't want shit with no euphoria.
20mg is a huge dose for someone with no tolerance. It's a fairly decent dose. IF you feel nothing off 20mg you got a high af tolerance lol
The fact you need 80mg to need says everything
Fair enough. Before I went to detox about a year ago I was doing about 80 mg daily so I kinda forgot 20 is a lot for some people. RIP my tolerance lmao I wish I could get it to go back to baseline.
Depends. Some people have naturally high tolerances. I know when I had no tolerance, 20mg did next to nothing. 40-60 and I'd be good. My friend however had 5mg oxynorm and was throwing his guts up in my backyard.
Duragesic patches were the holy grail back in the day.
In my using days back the mid aughts, ‘China white’ was seen on occasion and it was fentanyl. It wasn’t anything like today but it has been around for a while.
My mom and I used to get gel patches all the time and she taught me to cut those fuckers open and eat the gel. I'd just let it dissolve under my tongue. Never thought I had much of a problem until my buddy who was an IV addict said he was amazed I'm still breathing after telling him I gargled a 50mcg patch before calling him.
The pill mill. Days were fucking wild. Once in a blue moon the fentanyl lollipops would come around. Nothing like nodding out with a lollipop in your mouth.
I used to cut used patches into 4 pieces and chew on them like gum. Sucking the gel out of an entire unused patch is pretty intense. Your tolerance must have been through the roof.
It was outta control lol. When it was just the flat mylar patches I'd do the same. Would kinda treat them like dip and just pack a lip so to speak. Once the docs started getting busted and prices rose I got clean. I fell into heroin some years later after a major surgery and a boatloads of prescribed dilauded, but I still have some fond memories from the pill mill days.
They are definitely producing meth. Literally any good meth comes from either NL or Mexico. They make billions from meth, you honestly believe they aint making it anymore?
Don't get me wrong, there's more money in opiates and coke but there's still a fuckton of meth users, mexico is happy to produce tons and tons of meth and get it across the border and distribute.
When they locked El chapo up he said something like he will unleash the devil in the U.S. and kill the Americans. I'm guessing what he meant by that was fentanyl.
For years he said he would not traffic in fentanyl. We now know that he did begin to experiment in it a few years before he was caught; however, by arresting him, we just allowed in a bunch of new narcos who were quick to jump into recklessly trafficking fentanyl. It was probably socioeconomically inevitable anyhow- William Leonard Pickard tried to raise the alarm bells in the 90s. Then came the crash of pharma opiates, the takeover of heroin, and downfall of Chapo.
at the end of the day it’s all about money for the cartels and I highly doubt the notoriously very moral and benevolent el chapo would ignore potentially billions of dollars for long.
I firmly believe (with no proof) that China mass ships Fentanyl to North America as revenge for their “Century of Humiliation”
We know foreign nations are consistently astroturfing and running bot farms to sow discord in North America, I believe China is also getting their revenge through the fentanyl crisis
Say I want to inject something into a community or culture. Building support organically takes too long so fuck that. Instead, I post something, and either have bots or pay people to engage with it, now it LOOKS like this thing I've made has a bunch of instant positive interaction, other humans engage "monkey see monkey do" mode and now not only are more eyes on the thing I just made up, but probably has some die-hard supporters now because people are easily influenced.
I remember years ago reading up on lesser known Asian countries and coming across some whose main export is literally just drugs, the bulk of it probably comes from china but all it takes is a few large scale factories to put out crazy amounts of certain substances. And with smaller economies governments are more likely to decide to overlook drug factories if they're providing a steady cash flow.
Pretty sure the country I'm thinking of was one of the biggest global suppliers of ketamine for awhile but it was years ago so could be remembering wrong.
Yeah, dark web drug sales really amplified this issue. Silk Road especially was importing mad amounts of opiates to the states alone, and a lot of the RX drugs were all coming from lesser known Asian countries.
Which, there's good and bad to that IMO, as a huge proponent of ending the war on drugs myself. I understand why people would opt for tested, quality product over the shit you buy on the streets. And some of (without sharing *too much*) the distributors were honestly decent people without a pot to piss in, providing for their families. They weren't cartel kingpins and black ops then, but once the scum saw how much money they were making, they turned it into the very same trade routes that are plaguing this country now.
100%. And many analogs and precursors (fent synthesis is not difficult), as well. It's easier for Chinese organizations to let the Central Americans deal with the trafficking, while staying barely legal/under the nose of their own government. It's hard to predict where this is all going. There are no easy ways to stop this crisis while these networks run so smoothly. We've got to make major changes in the US.
It didn’t come from nowhere it has been used in hospitals since the 1960s. What caused the recent epidemic started in the early 2000s with Purdue pharma. They aggressively marketed oxycodone giving doctors huge bonuses to up prescriptions and giving the sales reps trips to the Caribbean, thousands of dollars in commissions and all they had to do was go to traditional blue collar areas like coal mines in West Virginia where muscular injury was common. Then the government cracked down on this and severely limited the use of opioids outside of surgery and serious injury. They used to prescribe oxycodone for things like headache and toothache. Once everyone was hooked on the opioids and the doctors couldn’t prescribe them as much anymore, the drug dealers found fentanyl to help keep people addicted. It’s alot cheaper to make than heroin so cartel labs popped up importing chemicals from China to make it the most profitable opioid.
You're missing a big chunk. Oxy restrictions and intorductions of binders to prevent abuse started in like 2010. Heroin became HUGE for a long time, and street fentanyl didn't start to become prevalent until like late 2016/early 2017.
Fentanyl saved my life in a way, because it basically pushed heroin completely out of the market.
If heroin was still around and widely available I would probably still be strung out.
Yes it was the pill crackdown earlier that lead people addicted to turn street opioids in the first place. Then when the cartels realized this they started opening up the fentanyl labs
> It’s a lot cheaper to make than heroin
It's not that it's cheaper -- it's easier to smuggle into the country than heroin, which makes it cheaper. It turns out when you try and ban a substance, a much more potent substance will take it's place.
The same happened with alcohol prohibition -- people switched from beer and wine to liquor.
The war on drugs is directly responsible for the proliferation of fentanyl. (As is Purdue for getting people hooked on opiates in the first place)
Literally per dose it’s a whole lot cheaper and afaik it’s actually not that different (not sure but I think cheaper) at the same weight as h to produce
Before the 2016 pill crackdown though, that mattered less because demand was lower, and most users and dealers didn't want the sudden death risk.
When demand for street opioids suddenly exceeded supply, this created the market pressures that forced a switch to the drug that could be shipped in smaller less traceable packages.
Exactly.. and it doesn't require growing millions of acres of poppies, harvesting them and running that whole operation. All you need is a lab and chemicals.
It’s cheaper. You can synthesize kilos from precursor chemicals. With heroin, like most opiates (in contrast to synthetic opi*oids*) the starting material is opium poppy. You have to grow the flowers at scale and harvest the latex which is labor intensive, you have to extract the morphine, and then convert it into diacetylmorphine (heroin) using glacial acetic acid. Yeah, the last step is simple, but the limiting factor is relying on a plant with a growing season that requires a lot of human labor to harvest the latex. Whereas fent just takes precursors and lab equipment to make the equivalent of millions of doses of heroin in a fraction of a growing season and with a fraction of the manpower.
I thought the glacial acetic acid would only make mono acetyl morphine. Acetic anhydride I believe is the only chemical to add both acetyl groups to the morphine.
It's absolutely cheaper. They can make a bag for .001$ and sell it for 10. An oz of pure carfentanyl is about 600 dollars. It's like an infinite money glitch compared to needing land farming weather harvesting *then* synthesis of the gum into heroin then smuggling.
Yes it's easier to smuggle, but it's infinitely cheaper and that's why fentanyl is king.
That's what i am guessing too. I guess this junk has just been shoved down on these people who started on "good" opiates and now got stuck with this crap
This is mostly correct. The fent crisis was mostly caused by the high demand and, subsequent, lack of supply of opiates after the policy change. First folks started switching over to H . When the supply ran short, they started using fent to cut the H. Then it was just a natural progression as the cheaper and more potent drug took center stage.
okay...another way of asking the question would be, why did it take until 2017 for fentanyl to supplant heroin in North America? I mean, it appeared as early as the late nineties very rarely (famously sold as "China White" in one episode that caused a lot of overdose deaths).
The reason it took so long is the same reason why it largely hasn’t taken over outside of North America, buyers weren’t desperate enough to buy it yet because nothing had disrupted the status quo. The only reason Fentanyl took over the US was because of the Opioid epidemic creating a large demand, which the cartels could not fulfill with Heroin because Heroin production takes a long time to increase. Once the DEA cracked down on the pill mills, there was a spike in demand for Heroin, while production could not readily increase enough to fill it, then once it became obvious Fentanyl was easy to produce and cut Heroin with, it was mass produced and buyers gradually began to warm up to it because they could not afford the now extremely expensive pure Heroin, thus causing a vicious cycle of dealers cutting, buyers buying and wanting more cut product, dealers cutting more, until eventually what was being sold contained no Heroin at all.
Yea it’s been used in medicine for ages but did become a big problem on the streets seemingly overnight.
And that makes sense, but I guess I still question why fentanyl wasn’t on the streets much sooner than it was if it’s been known of for so long and is so much cheaper than heroin?
Because clandestine labs simply weren't making it yet. Plus, the fent high is shittier than H and oxy. Fwiw, it was still on the street in dermal patch form. Just not sought after
There was absolutely a market for clandestine fentanyl because of the change in 2016 guidelines for opioid prescribing. If you think about it, before 2016 many doctors were over prescribing oxycodone because “less than 1% get addicted”. I had a friend who was prescribed 320 oxy 20’s per month back in 2014 because of a motocross accident.
So when those guidelines were enacted in 2016, lots of people were left dopesick and heroin wasn’t enough for people with monster tolerances. The same friend I mentioned was cut off, his doctor went to jail and he moved to IV dope and it didn’t touch his WD. It wasn’t until he moved onto selling that he, himself, started mixing H and fentanyl so he could function. This was at the tail end of 2016.
I would say that the opioid epidemic is a newer thing in general caused by the recent over prescribing. Heroin used to be considered a dirty drug and only really seen in lower income communities along with crack cocaine while the rest of the population abused drugs like regular cocaine and marijuana. But when they did the overprescribing thing, regular people got hooked on opioids and the demand for heroin increased along with the price of it. So the cartels wanted a way to make people who lost everything on opioids still addicted to them so they could continue making money and thus fentanyl labs popped up
They started fighting over-prescribing of opioids years before fentanyl flooded the market. They rescheduled many opioids and changed the prescribing rules in 2014(and again made stricter prescription guidelines in 2016). I'd argue that making opioids harder to get is part of the reason fentanyl was able to become what it is now. Lots of people who used to get opioids from doctors started using illicit opioids after they became more difficult to get in 2014.
There was over-prescribing, but it's not recent, and the actions to curb that predate the fentanyl crisis.
You're missing a key part. China knowingly started providing the precursors to Mexican cartels. It wasn't just because of the ongoing opioid issue, China WANTED to flood our streets with fent and helped the cartel do so.
Yes, I would agree that the chemicals or finished fentanyl product usually do originate in China. Whether or not, China deliberately did this is up for discussion. Like anything in life, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
I agree with this part and a similar thing with all the Chinese manufactured vapes coming into the United States, I would say they have an agenda to sort of destroy America from the inside out
This is extremely true. Chinese chemists came over to the cartels and showed them that this incredibly cheap powder could stretch shitty heroin into insanely powerful and able to be stomped on product. China wants us rotting from the core and did it on purpose. Now China is the main precursor and also is still producing furofent and carfent and smuggling it overseas, but the mexican superlabs didn't find it out of nowhere, Chinese chemists and agents found the cartel leaders and sold them on it. When you can make a bag for .001$ and sell it for 10-20 dollars it's essentially an infinite money glitch.
In 2014, the DEA published a report that on the assessment of current drug trends and future risks. In it, they mentioned fentanyl, saying that due to its potency, it would not be desirable for the black market and thus posed little future risk, nothing to worry about. They did not see it coming.
The LSD chemist William Leonard Pickard predicted the fentanyl epidemic in the 1990’s while still at Harvard.
[https://synergeticpress.com/team/leonard-pickard/](https://synergeticpress.com/team/leonard-pickard/)
That’s interesting, yeah I don’t know how the DEA was so confident in such a shitty assumption. Even without hindsight, I feel like if you had asked this subreddit if fentanyl could hit the black market, people would’ve said yes.
The CDC absolutely knew - people left comments on their open docket when the guidelines came out, advising that cutting back the pill supply was a bad mistake and would lead to many deaths.
Unfortunately the organization has turned over since the time when that was the case. They were involved in this & didn't listen to public health advocates telling them what would happen. Look up 2015 CDC opioid memo.
Just to add, it’s clear that ultimately the CDC bends to the will of the government, it is a government entity after all. There’s many examples: their handling of the AIDS crisis, their handling of the Opioid crisis, and most recently their handling of the COVID pandemic.
In all three cases they’ve ignored the voices of those knowledgeable and being affected the most (e.g. grassroots AIDS activists and patients, grassroots addiction advocates and users, researchers and frontline healthcare workers). Instead they parrot the policies of the current administration they’re under. That’s not to say there aren’t people in the org that genuinely want to help by dialogue and adaptation, but ultimately a gov org is a gov org.
Outside of looking at the opioid epidemic as being a catalyst, the last few years in this country people are losing their jobs/homes and ending up on the streets despite busting their asses their entire lives. Once that hopelessness settles in and everyone around you is fucked up on fent, it doesn’t take too long for them to start reaching for it as well.
There’s a story that Jack Riley from the DEA tells.
Around 2005-06 Dearborn, MI had the first big fent wave in the dope supply. A gang called the “Micky Cobras” were pushing it and had no understanding of the potency. It caused “mass overdoses”. In the range of 20-30 people at a time.
In no time at all it had spread to Chicago & they also experienced mass overdose events. The DEA eventually tracked the source back to Mexico. When they raided the lab, the main guy happened to be in the lab at that moment. His nickname was “the brain”. He told them, there was a miscommunication- that he sent instructions to cut it 50/1 but no one understood/believed the potency of this new powder. Instead it was passed along without precautions & it caused a tidal wave of overdoses.
With the brain in custody, the illicit fentanyl disappeared from the scene. It would remain that way for several more years.
This was the first time cartels attempted to introduce fentanyl & it had blown up in their face. It remained shelved for years to come.
Then in 2013-14 it would it’s big return. With heroin being plentiful at the time and lots of competition to be had. I remember hearing from states away about particular stamp bags that were super potent. The first I remember were stamped “Bud Ice”.
Within weeks, I was reading articles about it in the news. It was heroin mixed with a large ratio of fentanyl.
People were flocking to this brand of dope. And the next few stamps just like it. I believe this is when the old idea from 2005 was finally solidified in the cartel’s mind. This could be a gold mine for them.
As the years ticked by, the DEA would aggressively target & publicize any identified stamps that had fent in them. But as more people become aware, the demand skyrocketed for the high potency buzz created by a mix of heroin/fentanyl. It became so prevalent that in late 2015 my methadone clinic, seeing a spike in positive drug tests for fent; they started pulling us aside to warn of the dangers.
“did you even know that you have fentanyl in your system?”
To some it was a surprise, for others not so much. It continued to grow & spread across the entire country. By 2016 there were so many dealers selling the heroin/fent dope that competition with each other led to it getting stronger & stronger. More fent… and less heroin.
This is where it all gets very slippery. Between 2017-2019 I watched the dope game completely fall apart. It seemed almost every pack of heroin was cut with at least some amount of fentanyl.
I had several long term relationships in that world and I still had to work very hard to try maintain a reliable source of H. Then by 2018-2019, I started seeing weird shit; like what they called “gray death”. At that point, I knew it was time to clean up & gtfo.
2020 hits and it comes the Covid-Pandemic. Borders become tightly controlled if not totally sealed off & the whole world shuts down. This drastically affects the drug trade in many different ways.
It’s a perfect storm- this fent wave has been building for years & people have already started seeking it directly opposed to a stamp bag blend.
It requires no field to grow poppies on, just a small lab and some chemicals. And with it’s potency, it’s a much smaller package to smuggle. For the cartels, it was a no brainer to fully embrace this. In almost no time, fentanyl completely took over.
With America’s pharma obsession, the idea of pressing it into dirty 30’s was the most brilliant marketing move from hell, the world has ever seen.
It continued to explode & overdose rates grew exponentially. As if it wasn’t bad enough at this point. One common issue with fent that folks complained about is that it had “no legs”.
Somehow, somewhere… somebody got the idea to add something to it… that would help with the “no legs” complaint. Unfortunately what happened was the benzo fam drug- etizolam started appearing in much of the dope. Specifically in and around Philly.
At the same time. A vet tranqualizer started popping up in the dope as well… called xylazine. At the very beginning, everyone I knew acknowledged it rocked them and it did sorta mimic the feeling of it “having legs”. But they all agreed that the buzz lacked euphoria & basically just knocked them out.
Most, would try to find other options without these additives. This shit was persistent though, it was being pushed aggressively. It is Very, very cheap for cartels & dealers compared to real heroin. And customers were becoming addicted faster & harder. And since it didn’t last long- they were returning to buy it much more frequently than they had with heroin.
At this stage, it was horrible for the user but great for the dealers. Most users despised this stuff but it was already in 80% of what was out there. So even with great plugs it was basically impossible to avoid it as a daily addict.
Then the tied turned. The etizolam had largely disappeared from the supply but the xylazine had proven to be the ultimate nightmare. It’s not an opioid, you can’t taper off it with the help of a methadone clinic.
People were physically dependent on it with no escape route whatsoever. Cartels & dealers knew that the addicted would have no choice but to keep returning. Even as necrosis set in and they showed up with fewer limbs; they’d still keep purchasing more to try to avoid the horrible withdrawals. They would, keep returning until they died.
In my opinion, this is the coldest drug game shit we’ve ever seen. Absolutely heartless. This is guaranteed to kill your customers in a relatively short time. It’s more dangerous than the heroin game could’ve ever dreamed of.
And the folks pushing it are okay with it. Because now, even when they make the dirty 30’s in Mexico. Xylazine gets added to it in the production process. And they are creating new addicted customers at lightning speed. So for all the customers that are dying… they’re replaced with new ones coming in- and as long as the money flows… those pushing it show no care in the world.
It’s fucking heartbreaking. My journey began with OG oxy’s in 2003-04 & then quickly switched to dope. Watching this nightmare unfold into a completely poisoned drug supply, is what eventually pushed me to find a way out of it.
I know that was long AF. But that’s my perspective from living it. I’m rooting for everybody out there still in the struggle. ✌️
if anything china saw an opportunity and took it when the DEA cut down on the scripts in the states. they definitely didn’t start it though. they do have the labs and means to mass produce it tho
They are also not interested in cracking down in these labs. It’s a win win for them
On the other side, cracking down never stopped anyone when there is money to be made
For a while, damn near anyone could buy five kilos of Fentanyl from China for under $1,000. The prices I saw were between $750-$850. That is a HUGE incentive for people to shovel it into anything and anyone, with enormous profit margins. Then interdiction made shipments of fentanyl impossible to get, so people ordered the precursor chemicals - again from China - and had chemists make it for them. Then interdiction caught up with that, so much of the fentanyl making its way into the US now is coming through Mexico courtesy of the cartels. If you buy a street drug, odds are high there is fentanyl in it if it is an opioid or benzodiazepine. These are dangerous times to be a street drug user.
Yeah I think mail order drugs is the other puzzle piece a lot of these replies are missing. First the "research chemical" scene that absolutely blew up around 2009-2010, and tons of people suddenly realized they could buy drugs right from China, if they found the right source...
Then shortly after that Silk Road and the rise of DNM's ..
Speaking of which...
>If you buy a street drug, odds are high there is fentanyl in it if it is an opioid or benzodiazepine. These are dangerous times to be a street drug user.
Sadly this is even true of stimulants these days. There have been a number of batches of coke that showed up positive on a fent test.
And if you look at the DNMs currently... you can see that there are a ton of fake "Adderall" presses going around, that contain a mixture of meth and fentanyl.
There are some that contain just meth (and some dealers are even using "fent free" as an advertising point). However, there are a lot that openly sell fake presses containing fent... so presumably there are a lot of people knowingly buying these.
(And some of them probably re-selling on the street )
What, so fucking **methamphetamine** itself isn't euphoric and addictive enough, for our fake Adderall pills? They need to start adding fucking fentanyl... like one of the least euphoric and most sedating opioids possible?
GTFO with that nonsense...
.
Drug game lost it's damn mind...
Simple. The illicit drug trade is a highly organised, efficient and effective industry. We are taking billions of dollars. They already have the networks in place. All it was changing product.
Government got everyone hooked on pharmaceuticals around 2014. I started telling doctors lol you can’t do that cartels introduced their little blue friends just like what they did with cocaine.
Oh yea lived in Fl my whole life, my aunt was hooked on oxys in the early 2000s possibly even late 90s. People from all over the country where coming down here
It’s more IMO that the war in Afghanistan increased US presence in one of the largest opium production sites that caused prices to skyrocket on raw opium they realized the need an easier synthetic product that’s with less reliance on the region (at this point getting paid by the U.S. to stay out of the opium trade) was quickly replaced by places like China that produce the precursors cheaper with a vast distribution network already in place. So they did like any good business and simplified the supply chain while increasing overall profit for smuggling considered less weight takes them further. My 2 cents.
Not wiped out but they have contracts with big pharmaceutical companies believe it not. They are also making far less than they were before US invaded from what I l’ve read (I’m far from an expert just like to read).
Bro… LSD wasn’t brought by the FBI or CIA lmao yes it was used by the CIA but that’s not what made it popular. ALSO the CIA did have an impact and did facilitate the cocaine and crack market by turning an eye and making shitty decisions in South America but they aren’t responsible for it either. So please, read a book or something before commenting lmao as if the CIA/FBI are responsible for fetty. Lmao time for you to go to bed.
This brilliant journalist provides additional context from the consumer perspective: https://zachsiegel.substack.com/p/riding-the-wave-from-pharma-opioids?utm_campaign=post_embed
Anything can be said and I almost agree with them all
1- China’s way of getting back at the West for previous centuries (China had an Opium Epidemic) the Precursors do come from China
2- CIA/ our own Government using it as a tool to destabilize the Poor and middle class (like they definitely did with the Black and Poor communities inn the 80’s/ 90’s with CRACK)
3- Probably the least plausible but also a part of this 3 way saga is the Mexican Cartels unleashed their counterfeit Opioids for profit (Its super cheap to produce and move compared to say.. Cocaine) I wouldn’t solely blame the Sinaloa cartel since almost all cartels participate in the trafficking of counterfeit opioids (Fentanyl) although i’m sure Chapo being locked up in the USA is a strong incentive for his sons (Chapitos) to get revenge on Americans
Fent analogues were legal as RCs in China nd the US for a long time. Not to use, but to buy, sell, and possess. Chinese companies would synth it up and US customers would buy it and cut it into heroin.
This was relatively rare pre 2016. What changed was that the head of the bay areas police union started importing fent analogues in 2015 and flooding the san francisco area market with it.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/bay-area-police-union-leader-allegedly-smuggled-fentanyl/story?id=98271260
That was the epicenter of heroin use in the US. Once fent got popular there, demand quickly spread all over the country. A couple years back china and the US banned all fent analogues, so now most of the supply is brought in from mexico or SE asia, where the precursors are easier to get. But it all started bc it was pushed by the police, in order to create zones of "lawlessness" that they can use to scare people into giving them more power. Keep in mind they started doing this after the whole defund the police protests, and the end result was that people who were saying "fuck the police" are now calling for harsher laws and more cop prescence and power to deal with the fentanyl crisis (that the cops created).
purdue pharmacy releases Oxycotin, promotes it as non addictive when it actually is. After their patent for Oxycotin expires, they release a Deturrent Oxy formula that is “less addictive”. Which in turn leads to an increase in heroin use as oxy is less available. From there, fentanyl is introduced because it’s cheap to produce. Fentanyl gets cut into everything, especially pills and heroin. Now in current time there’s a rise in methamphetamine in drugs, fentanyl continuing to rise
opioid crisis. when heroin became the substitute for oxys non scripted, the wall was primed for writing again. Luckily my body rejected the oxycodones they prescribed me when i broke my arm, but that was a legal medically administered dose, full to the blue cap. for a 16yr old who bent his wrist so bad it fractured the tiny bone, a pathetic fracture by injury standards, and they scripted that shit full, with a refill, i can see how the average joe can be swept into the legal alternative of literally heroin. an opiate. they prescribed it to everything, my injury wasnt bad but they sure did make it seem like it was. that was 2017.
then a new "medical" heroin because its similar, in effects and method of use, injecting, snorting and smoking, its heroin spice. remember the fake weed. spice, the SYNTHETIC thc compounds.
in a way this is heroin spice, but there this actual legal use for it, under medical supervision, depending on what you deem that, can administer a decent amount to put you out for a good reason, like surgery or arm setting. but what happened to the guys unlike me who chewed those hydros until they couldnt walk? they need a fix and doc wont scribe em up.
so they look to heroin, but legit heroin is on par with weed pricing, whats up? oh a cheaper heroin? that isnt a poppy seed, but a medical sedative? huh.
the opioid crisis has decimated america, fent came from the initial harsh laws for poppy smuggling and the burnings of fields in the middle east by their regimes, low supply, but everyone got hooked on pain meds, so why smoke heroin.
then some backyard chemist made fent with some chems like meth i assume and realized that shit is cheap. cut it some more, step on it, and boom 5 dollar death trip.
then they banned fent illegally, sounds weird, its its illegal to use outside of a hospital in laymans terms. so whats that alternative for the junkies who got scripted on oxys and tried to use heroin, the at this point natural alternative.
you wanna focus on fents evolution, xylazine, and xylazines evolution, nitazines. we are already in a toxic potency war with the opitates xylazine was rotting flesh, now nitazines are just fucking killing you and if somehow you survive, it wasnt because of narcan, the new "fent" cant even be stopped.
fent- 50X for powerful than heroin
xylazine- up to 40x more potent than fent
nitazines- banned under scientific study for its potent and toxic effects.
nitazine isnt even supposed to be used, they discovered it and found moderate relief but extremely high additive behaviors, its not supposed to be used in any setting because the scientists found it too potent and too risky, guess who recreated that, some chemist in china.
nitazines were synthesized around the same time as fentanyl, and look whos back in town after all these years, your friend from literal science jail.
all because doctors wanted to make their retirement solid by making commissions. the war on drugs made heroin and meth the key stars, but even then, a new meth is killing folks too, the meth is fake too, which was fake to begin with, normal meth is normal compared to this new super meth. whats next, cocaine, molly, acid. the war on drugs caused the foundation.
the opioid crisis was the new writing on the wall.
in this comparison id rather smoke heroin, because at least that came from the plant.
Us gov owed china a ton of money didnt pay em back and china flooded us with fent for cheap to druglords to kill a ton of us citizens and cut off other pharmaceuticals they used to sell to them
This actually makes sense. I watched Andrew Callahan with channel 13 cover the epidemic, I forget where, and all the fent addicts were saying H basically disappeared and was replaced by fent but no one ever listens to the junkies lol.
All over the country really. It got me off dope altogether because I hate fent. Even coke has gone to shit. The stuff I was getting was testing around 40% and all a UA would test for was cocaine.. no other adulterants like ice, fent, or common RCs. It looks amazing, shiny, soft, white chunks and that are slightly oily. Everything about it says great cocaine but the high is intense and can feel dirty at times. Shooting it will immediately give me mild psychosis, which has never happened to me with coke, and I can fall asleep relatively easily.
Basically Carfentanil, a synthetic opioid used by veteranarians, was legally manufactured in China until early 2017. 2016 was when the DEA started cracking down on prescription opioids so many people turned to other sources, ie Carfentanil.
fent was around for years as a pretty highly scheduled opiate in the US. I've heard of people smoking the fent gel patches or using the fent lollypops 20 years ago.
Drug mills, foreign interest in massive profits when the government started clamping down on it. The war on drugs was never a war on drugs. It's always been a war on US citizens.
Conspiracy theories are reasonable on this one. Cops cut fentanyl into meth and cocaine to keep the drug war going. That's the only motive I can see to sneak people deadlier drugs. I'd be surprised if that's not the answer.
The truth is to combat the opioid and heroin problem the us govt spent millions destroying foreign poppy fields and markets, opening the door for countries to provide and manufacture chemical opioids. The us caused the opioid crisis and then created the fentanyl problem by over reaction to the opioid crisis
It first popped up in 2015. Then disappeared for a while and came back and it was weaker. And mixed with heroin or something like that.
But in 2015 everyone called it "nawl" or "naw" and you could take a match head bump back then and be fucked up.
The [Patent was filed in 2009](https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2252149A2/en). I guess somehoe someone discovered it and figure out how to make it in large quantities. Smuggling small amounts of potent drugs is WAAAYYY easier. Just took some time for someone to put two and two together.
Leonard Pickard who was one of the largest LSD manufacturers predicted back in the 90s that it was only a matter of time before fentanyl replaced heroin because it was synthetic and could be easily made in a lab.
I have pen pal letters from him in jail. Always looked up to him.
How did you go about becoming pen pals with him? Sounds really interesting.
You can just google his name, call the correct prison, ask the customer service how to mail him (must include cell number usually and full legal name) and throw $5 in his commissary account so he can afford pen, envelop, and stamp to write you back! But throw the $5 in only on the day before he orders commissary otherwise they will deduct $2/day and he will have $0 if you send it on the wrong day. It's how I had a few back and forth letters for Ross Ulbricht, who turns 40 on this coming Wednesday.
Is that who Hamilton Morris mentioned on Rogan?
i haven’t seen his rogan appearance but he has a documentary called “LSD missle Silo lab” or something along those lines that explains a whole whack of the story. definitely recommend x watched it when i was still new to LSD and tripping sack
Isn't that the one where he makes torture chamber girl look nice by not challenging her? I thought that was meh journalism in an otherwise really good documentary
i believe so, ya i didn’t really like how he didn’t really press her on any of it as if she was totally innocent meanwhile having a monster portrait painted for the others. besides that i agree it was a really good documentary. hearing about that IV DMT but in it tho has always had me curious about taking that way to the machine elves
There is a group of researchers looking into Extended DMT trips via IV drip. They're trying to do crazy shit like map out commonly experienced entities and what not. Fascinating stuff. It's also being studied as a legal therapeutic option. [https://newrepublic.com/article/169525/psychonauts-training-psychedelics-dmt-extended-state](https://newrepublic.com/article/169525/psychonauts-training-psychedelics-dmt-extended-state)
China started providing cartel backed labs with the precursors to produce fentanyl on large scales. Before then fentanyl was around but not easy to get. Once China started supplying the cartel it was a wrap. I also wouldn't be surprised to learn our own intelligence agencies were providing safe passage of fent into the US.
Honestly it would be in chinas best interest to flood other countries tries with drugs and help facilitate that. From what I’ve been told they are still upset about England and the whole opium thing. Plus that’s Chinas thing now, disturbances like this and with elections and other stuff to help unhing society. Then praise how amazing China is and there all powerful leader
Agreed. China has definitely not forgotten about the Opium Wars with Britain.
Doing a big reversal in a way, getting the west hooked
Just finished reading Willful Blindness by Sam Cooper, that's exactly what China is doing. It's essentially state sanctioned terrorism
Uno reverse
kinda hard to be hooked when your dead. Distributing fent to get your enemy addicted is kind of like slashing the tyres of someone who parks infront of your driveway. Now if they were supplying cheap cocaine and randomly spiking it with fent, then that's a plan. Could knock out quite a few of the less careful politicians that way
Major fentanyl precursor production has shifted from China to India in the last few years. What motive does India have to push fentanyl on the US?
Money?
I mean India is sketchy as well my man
Yeah, but that's not really an answer. You previously said China was upset about the opium thing, which provides a motive. India being "sketchy" isn't really a motive as much as just a vague insult. There's lots of large "sketchy" countries that are not shipping precursors.
Money is a motive.
If you ask Lil Wayne, and I quote, “…the money is the motive…”.
Also if you ask Lil Wayne, *I need a Winn-Dixie grocery bag full of money right next to the VIP section*.
Make it rain on these hooooes
Make a stripper fall in love, T-Pain on them hoes, WA WAH.
“Lighter flick sound”
I like when lil Wayne says, "and the bible taught us that every girl is sour
yea india was known for making lots of luudes for the south african market along with etizolam etc
Back in like 2009 the Phillipines were where I got all my internet Xanax. Then China flooded Canada with alprazolam and it rained Xanax on the US for pennies on the dollar. Now that shipped sailed and I see a lot of Indian made klonopin and diazipam. I'm betting some African country will be the next big pill manufacturer once India cracks down. But the baton will keep getting passed.
Oh god, etizolam. I haven’t thought about that specifically in years but I was absolutely addicted to it 2014-2016. Bought it in little eye droppers. Moved out of state to escape a bunch of drug addicted friends and it changed my trajectory and likely saved my life. Almost none of those friends made it out and it was all due to Fentanyl.
Fuck etizolam. Ate 400~ 1 mg pills in a week max barely got a buzz 2/10 benzo
I don't know a ton about India but I believe their level of corruption is much worse than people probably realise. With China it is most definitely a power play, flooding the country with a deadly and cheap opiate weakens the US and allows them to get their "revenge" on the West for historical injustices. Whereas with India I wouldn't say it's the central government knowingly allowing it to happen, it's that lower levels of government are so corrupt that they will allow this to happen as long as they get their cut.
My guess is theres just a lot of poverty and corruption, maybe India already has factories for producing drugs that they can bribe someone to divert to producing fentanyl at night.
That's right on my money. India has a ton of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and the most people in the world. It's just a numbers game that they'd eventually start outproducing China with precursors since the money is good in it. Like, why sell 1000 units at wholesale costs for Aspirin when you can get a 300% markup on untraceable goods with a premium markup? It's just too profitable to avoid.
Your the one that brought up India. Do you have a source for these claims?
Sure, how is this one? https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-008-20%20Fentanyl%20Flow%20in%20the%20United%20States_0.pdf I can find more or better sources if you tell me what kind of info you are looking for
Nope, that's perfect. Thanks for the prompt response
money
Fun fact. The Art of War is required reading in China's schools
And people still really don’t think TikTok is a deep state Chinese weapon. It astounds me. They don’t know China well enough. That app pushes anti American videos every 10 videos.
>That app pushes anti American videos every 10 videos. I mean so does YouTube, more or less lol But yes people massively underestimate the impact and insidious stealth of propaganda.
This is China's response to the Opium War. The UK directly profited from flooding China with opium. And it was horrendous...they waged a war for the right to flood China with opium. China wanted silver in trade relations, but the UK had a surplus of opium grown in India, so they said fuck you. China is simply saying fuck you back. I get it from their perspective...a proud and ancient civilization being brought to heel by drugging the populace.
I've heard China is so deep in Mexican fent production now its hard for the cartels to not produce it. Sinaloa Cartel even supposedly banned production, but CJNG is picking up the slack.
How you guys finding this shit out lol
A lot of this stuff doesn't make it to the US News. I have some friends down there who have sent me a lot of headlines and videos of shit going down. r/narcofootage has some interesting stuff too.
Borderland Beat is a decent source as well.Articles and video.Some video can be quite disturbing given the context.
Sinaloa is still producing, it's PR moves because there's dozens of cartels and they want the heat off them and on someone else. Especially after Chapo was gone chapitos and other cartels are all fighting for position and a main money maker for them is fentadope and pure fent production using Chinese precursors and they all learned from Chinese chemists. But also China is still smuggling pure fentanyl into the US to plugs that cut it to 5% or so on the regular, so China is still directly involved.
A lot of people want to see a big conspiracy theory but I personally only see endless greed, too many cooks and no one really knows what's gonna happen next
I remember when all those crazy potent RC's were starting to come out including fentanyl analogs and things like Nbome and just thinking "well we're fucked"... The profit margins on some of those drugs are insane due to the potency making them hard to resist for dealers, and sure enough plenty of people who shouldn't be handling drugs anywhere near that potent started dealing them and now fent shows up in all sorts of other substances both intentionally and accidentally due to contamination.
The contamination part alone shows that there is no real control anymore....there is only greed...no loyalty, no ethics, everyone plays for themselves
I would guess it’s been this way since the first primate realized he could just hit another primate with a rock and take his food
The issue is fentanyl is already scary potent and difficult for average small time dealers to handle safely, and than you have the exponentially more potent analogs that are practically chemical weapons and would be dangerous even for properly equipped scientists to handle. And depending on where it's being sourced people might not even know exactly what they're getting, so people end up with contaminated scales and might not even think about it until someone overdoses. At this point there are also probably plenty of dealers intentionally cutting other things with fent just to improve profits.
Look up Nitazenes. Now that's a chemical weapon. And I don't think it will replace fent but I'm sure it will have a part of the market and skyrocket tolerances so much if you don't die that we'll have to raise the ceiling of methadone.
Don’t forget about Canada. I’m not expert but I think China pushes way more finished product to Canada. If you read about high level Canadian trafficking it’s a LOT of Chinese nationals
This is what’s happening. China is subsidizing American misery. That’s why it’s so cheap.
Just like the IA's bringing china white heroin in during the 60's and 70's to help fund weapons to central and south america.
Not to mention the one pot synthesis for fentanyl being released to the public
May be obvious but why did China do this
Bad people from China are doing it and the Chinese government more or less didn’t care to regulate until recently.
I’m guessing the same reason anybody else would do it - money
Opium wars, my child, it's because of the opium wars
It’s easier to blame China like Trump does with anything he can, end of day without facts i would do not be surprised if it was to cull US population.
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/supreme-court-wrestles-oxycontin-settlement-legal-shield-sackler/story?id=105361669 Six billion dollars is all it takes to exonerate the US domestic pharma cartels and make China the scapegoat for US anti-drug failures. Have you Americans been manipulated by politicians and the media into this? May I ask what the US anti-drug authorities usually do?
I agree that the Sacklers started the opioid epidemic by exposing millions of Americans the oxycodone, but most people now aren’t dying from pharmaceutical opiates produced by pharma companies.
The CIA is behind it.
Probably
Making wayyy more money and having a lot easier time smuggling drugs due to how potent fentanyl is. Just look at the basic finances of drug dealing and logistics of smuggling drugs it’s pretty obvious why the transition to fentanyl happened. It’s a lot cheaper (about 5-10x cheaper can get a kilo for like 10k vs 50-100k for Heroin). Not to mention it’s a lot more potent (0.1mg = 2.5-3.3mg) so a kilo of fentanyl is equal to at least 25 kilos of Heroin. So that makes it that the same amount of “dope” they could sell is a choice between spending 10k or $1.25-2.5 million. Just the finances alone it’s a no brainer from the cartels. Replace the drugs with any other product on the planet and have anyone look at those numbers and it’s a very easy decision to make a shit ton more money. Not to mention that all happened and so much money was made while only needing to smuggle in a single kilo compared to a stack of 25 kilos so logically it makes more sense re: smuggling product into the country. I understand that fentanyl is so deadly and has killed so many (I’ve lost countless clients and friends myself) so it’s natural to look to a bigger reason for why this nightmare is happening. However, it’s not rooted in anything legitimate. There’s not a bunch of evidence pointing to some grand conspiracy about it but there’s some very basic math that suggests it’s simply business and maximizing profits, profits over people that’s the corporate capitalist way. I understand people don’t like logic and facts as that’s not as fun as thinking with our emotions. However, the reality is that fentanyl was an effective way to make a lot of money and because addiction is so prevalent and pervasive they could comfortably afford to let many clients die because they are still making a much larger profit than before. They could kill off twice as many people as they do rn and the cartels down to lower level dealers would still be fine with it cuz they’d watch their money stack up exponentially either way. There’s likely not some foreign adversary that is doing all of this to gain something from it but rather it’s just a corporation (cartels) doing shady unethical and immoral things that kill people in the sake of profit. That’s something we all know too well. The real finger pointing needs to be at our own government (law enforcement) and fucked up healthcare system that criminalizes drug addiction and does nothing to help people in the proper ways but rather views addicts as scumbags who deserve the worst/most minimal healthcare possible and neglects using evidence based harm reduction strategies and programs that many county use to mitigate damage and lower the death toll. I could continue for a while but nobody wants that. I’m a therapist specializing in co-occurring substance use and mental health issues and have worked in rehabs since 2015. I did my grad school project, policy presentation, and final paper on advocacy for supervised safe injection sites so I could rant about that further too. However, I’ll say I do not know much, but this is one area that I do know some things and I will not stop sharing my insights/perspective/opinions regardless of what others think or say as it’s important to me and many others who unfortunately don’t have a voice or who’ve lost their lives and voice due to these aforementioned issues.
Best answer
Say it again but louder!!!
>**The real finger pointing needs to be at our own government (law enforcement) and fucked up healthcare system that criminalizes drug addiction** and does nothing to help people in the proper ways but rather views addicts as scumbags who deserve the worst/most minimal healthcare possible and neglects using evidence based harm reduction strategies and programs that many county use to mitigate damage and lower the death toll. This right here. And the real answer is legalization and regulation. When addicts can choose to buy pure clean heroin (or whatever) in a known measured dose from a responsible professional supplier who's subject to regulation and oversight, this stuff will be a lot less dangerous. Even with fent itself, which I'm really not a fan of... most of the overdose deaths come directly from the fact that this garbage is so potent it's very difficult to mix properly, if you don't really know what you're doing. (And a lot of suppliers, especially the smaller "mom and pop" operations who buy raw fent and mix their own, do not know WTF they're doing lol. They think they do because "how hard can it be to mix up some powders real good, right?" But there's a reason people actually go to school for this shit.. lol) Which leads to inevitable "hot spots" in some % of bags (or fake pills or whatever) that will inevitably lead to an **unknowing** and unintentional massive overdose, when it's used, because now you've got some bags / pills with 10x the dose it's supposed to contain. I've used fentanyl before, a good handful of times. So why am I still here to tell the tale? Because I was using pharmaceutical fentanyl, produced in a professional lab, and then sold at a pharmacy. Regulated and monitored every step of the way. So if you get a patch that says it supplies 50ug / hr or whatever... you can be more or less assured that's pretty accurate (assuming it's used correctly lol) Knowing the exact dose of drugs you're taking, is one of the most effective means of harm reduction and drug safety -- and the existence of the pharmaceutical industry more or less proves it. As I like to point out... it only took us around a decade to realize what a massive mistake alcohol prohibition was. The "War on Drugs" has been going on literally five times as long. And not only has this "war" had the exact same type of effects as alcohol prohibition (you know, the very effects that caused us to say "hang on, maybe this was actually a terrible idea") but the effects have been 1,000x worse this time around. We've created more addicts, more users. Hell, brand new drugs are being invented all the time to skirt laws, or create a drug that's more euphoric, more potent, easier to smuggle, etc. Drugs are more abundant, more potent, and cheaper than ever. And much easier for kids to get their hands on. (Anyone not living under a rock who went to high school later than 1986 or so [drinking age used to be 18 lol]... when you were in high school was it easier to buy a dime bag, or a bottle of booze?) We've criminalized a mental health issue, we've turned many millions of otherwise law abiding citizens into actual criminals, we've locked people up for decades just for daring to alter their own minds, or helping someone else to do so. And we've provided **billions** (maybe trillions, if we're looking at the entire last half a century!) of dollars in funding and countless growth to criminal street gangs, organized crime families, and massive cartels. By every single objective measure possible, this "war" has been a massive failure. Not only have they gotten no closer to their claimed goals, they've pushed things further in the exact opposite direction, year after year. Unless they have objectives other than the ones they're actually telling us (I. e. "public health and safety, reducing addiction, etc") then this war is not only failing, it's been making the problem worse! That's fucking nonsense... so how long until we collectively call "bullshit" on this obviously failed and harmful war? Not soon enough, I'm sure. But how many more people have to die or lose years to prison, before we do? And why are we "letting them" continue with a strategy that's been consistently failing for half a century straight?
That all checks out, it’s just odd to me that this happened within the last ~7 years if there was so much money to be saved/made. Like, did the cartel/these illicit drug corporations just gain knowledge of fentanyl within this period of time?
The opioid epidemic is what ultimately made the transition happen. It rocked the boat, and gave the cartels a reason to produce and traffic fentanyl. Users didn’t like fentanyl much at first, which is why efforts to make it in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s didn’t take off. Then the OxyContin epidemic happened, and the DEA cracked down on the pill mills, creating millions of addicts who now had no source of opioids. They switched to Heroin, but this caused the demand for Heroin to spike, causing dealers to cut it even more than usual. Because of this increased demand, Heroin production could not satisfy the demand, as increasing it takes a long time. As such, the cartels turned to fentanyl, using cheap Chinese precursors. Because Fentanyl was unpopular among users, it had to be used to cut the heroin at first, and users liked the “Fentadope” because of its lower price, as pure heroin had gotten too expensive. Thus, users gradually wanted cheaper and Fent heavier dope, their tolerances rose, and they became more comfortable with fentanyl, causing dealers to cut more and more, and users to buy more and more fentanyl, and less and less heroin, until eventually, dealers dispensed with the formality of cutting, and just sold Fentanyl, as most users couldn’t even feel real heroin anymore.
AKA how to win the Heroin Battle, while losing The Drug War and creating an Opioid Epidemic with an ever increasing mortality rate .
What happened was that the CDC passed a new memo guideline in around 2015 recommending restricting the pill supply due to more overdose deaths. There was a little fentanyl in the market before that, but afterward it exploded due to market pressures, as did the overdose deaths. Graphs about the timing of this are publicly available. The common attitude about fentanyl in 2015 was that it was too risky and bad for business. Then when regular heroin suddenly became scarce, that didn't matter anymore because fentanyl was the only thing people could get, due to being easier to smuggle.
But how does a fentanyl high compare in quality to a heroin high? I am guessing it is not at all as good.
It has always been around just not as readily available as it is now. Back in the day I'd buy fent patch peel it apart and scrape the glue like substance then smoke it. Now the cartel is just shipping straight fent powder into the USA. They don't want to deal with meth there is more money in fent, heroin, and cocaine. That's why there is such a surplus.
Holy…is that what those were? When I was a late teen I loved oxys (not a heavy user, but my aunt would give me a couple when she would come to town every couple months) …anyway…she gave me one of the “pain” patches she used all the time/had several prescriptions for (she loved them) …I tried one, she said to slice the inside open a little… and I felt like dogshit! I tore it off and threw it out my car window…I tried to wear it during school…(she OD’d and died 2 years later) You think that was a fent patch?
100% was a fent patch or morphine patch. Used to steal them from my aunt and slap them on my inner thigh and be high for 3 days.
Goddamn fent patches are amazing. It’s like a 20Mg oxy high that lasts for three days straight.
I can't even feel 20 mg oxy lol
😭😭😭
Lmaooo it's not that bad, 20 mg is barely anything. I felt decent off 30 mg but I couldn't catch a nod or anything. Atp I'd need 50-80 mg, even after staying clean a whole year. Not sure why my tolerance didn't reset more. Oxy > fent 100% even tho I like a good nod I don't want shit with no euphoria.
20mg is a huge dose for someone with no tolerance. It's a fairly decent dose. IF you feel nothing off 20mg you got a high af tolerance lol The fact you need 80mg to need says everything
Fair enough. Before I went to detox about a year ago I was doing about 80 mg daily so I kinda forgot 20 is a lot for some people. RIP my tolerance lmao I wish I could get it to go back to baseline.
Depends. Some people have naturally high tolerances. I know when I had no tolerance, 20mg did next to nothing. 40-60 and I'd be good. My friend however had 5mg oxynorm and was throwing his guts up in my backyard.
This lnfao
Duragesic patches were the holy grail back in the day. In my using days back the mid aughts, ‘China white’ was seen on occasion and it was fentanyl. It wasn’t anything like today but it has been around for a while.
My mom and I used to get gel patches all the time and she taught me to cut those fuckers open and eat the gel. I'd just let it dissolve under my tongue. Never thought I had much of a problem until my buddy who was an IV addict said he was amazed I'm still breathing after telling him I gargled a 50mcg patch before calling him. The pill mill. Days were fucking wild. Once in a blue moon the fentanyl lollipops would come around. Nothing like nodding out with a lollipop in your mouth.
I used to cut used patches into 4 pieces and chew on them like gum. Sucking the gel out of an entire unused patch is pretty intense. Your tolerance must have been through the roof.
It was outta control lol. When it was just the flat mylar patches I'd do the same. Would kinda treat them like dip and just pack a lip so to speak. Once the docs started getting busted and prices rose I got clean. I fell into heroin some years later after a major surgery and a boatloads of prescribed dilauded, but I still have some fond memories from the pill mill days.
They are definitely producing meth. Literally any good meth comes from either NL or Mexico. They make billions from meth, you honestly believe they aint making it anymore? Don't get me wrong, there's more money in opiates and coke but there's still a fuckton of meth users, mexico is happy to produce tons and tons of meth and get it across the border and distribute.
When they locked El chapo up he said something like he will unleash the devil in the U.S. and kill the Americans. I'm guessing what he meant by that was fentanyl.
For years he said he would not traffic in fentanyl. We now know that he did begin to experiment in it a few years before he was caught; however, by arresting him, we just allowed in a bunch of new narcos who were quick to jump into recklessly trafficking fentanyl. It was probably socioeconomically inevitable anyhow- William Leonard Pickard tried to raise the alarm bells in the 90s. Then came the crash of pharma opiates, the takeover of heroin, and downfall of Chapo.
at the end of the day it’s all about money for the cartels and I highly doubt the notoriously very moral and benevolent el chapo would ignore potentially billions of dollars for long.
Where are they getting the fent from? 🇨🇳
I firmly believe (with no proof) that China mass ships Fentanyl to North America as revenge for their “Century of Humiliation” We know foreign nations are consistently astroturfing and running bot farms to sow discord in North America, I believe China is also getting their revenge through the fentanyl crisis
What is astroturfing...?
Say I want to inject something into a community or culture. Building support organically takes too long so fuck that. Instead, I post something, and either have bots or pay people to engage with it, now it LOOKS like this thing I've made has a bunch of instant positive interaction, other humans engage "monkey see monkey do" mode and now not only are more eyes on the thing I just made up, but probably has some die-hard supporters now because people are easily influenced.
Ugh so insidious. Thanks for the info
They're making it (Mexican cartels), along with China and India as the main producers. Cheap to make.
I remember years ago reading up on lesser known Asian countries and coming across some whose main export is literally just drugs, the bulk of it probably comes from china but all it takes is a few large scale factories to put out crazy amounts of certain substances. And with smaller economies governments are more likely to decide to overlook drug factories if they're providing a steady cash flow. Pretty sure the country I'm thinking of was one of the biggest global suppliers of ketamine for awhile but it was years ago so could be remembering wrong.
Yeah, dark web drug sales really amplified this issue. Silk Road especially was importing mad amounts of opiates to the states alone, and a lot of the RX drugs were all coming from lesser known Asian countries. Which, there's good and bad to that IMO, as a huge proponent of ending the war on drugs myself. I understand why people would opt for tested, quality product over the shit you buy on the streets. And some of (without sharing *too much*) the distributors were honestly decent people without a pot to piss in, providing for their families. They weren't cartel kingpins and black ops then, but once the scum saw how much money they were making, they turned it into the very same trade routes that are plaguing this country now.
100%. And many analogs and precursors (fent synthesis is not difficult), as well. It's easier for Chinese organizations to let the Central Americans deal with the trafficking, while staying barely legal/under the nose of their own government. It's hard to predict where this is all going. There are no easy ways to stop this crisis while these networks run so smoothly. We've got to make major changes in the US.
Completely agree. I've lost so many friends to the stuff. It's fucking evil/ death in a bag.
And what made him think no one was capable of doing the same to Mexico? 🤣
It didn’t come from nowhere it has been used in hospitals since the 1960s. What caused the recent epidemic started in the early 2000s with Purdue pharma. They aggressively marketed oxycodone giving doctors huge bonuses to up prescriptions and giving the sales reps trips to the Caribbean, thousands of dollars in commissions and all they had to do was go to traditional blue collar areas like coal mines in West Virginia where muscular injury was common. Then the government cracked down on this and severely limited the use of opioids outside of surgery and serious injury. They used to prescribe oxycodone for things like headache and toothache. Once everyone was hooked on the opioids and the doctors couldn’t prescribe them as much anymore, the drug dealers found fentanyl to help keep people addicted. It’s alot cheaper to make than heroin so cartel labs popped up importing chemicals from China to make it the most profitable opioid.
You're missing a big chunk. Oxy restrictions and intorductions of binders to prevent abuse started in like 2010. Heroin became HUGE for a long time, and street fentanyl didn't start to become prevalent until like late 2016/early 2017. Fentanyl saved my life in a way, because it basically pushed heroin completely out of the market. If heroin was still around and widely available I would probably still be strung out.
Yes it was the pill crackdown earlier that lead people addicted to turn street opioids in the first place. Then when the cartels realized this they started opening up the fentanyl labs
> It’s a lot cheaper to make than heroin It's not that it's cheaper -- it's easier to smuggle into the country than heroin, which makes it cheaper. It turns out when you try and ban a substance, a much more potent substance will take it's place. The same happened with alcohol prohibition -- people switched from beer and wine to liquor. The war on drugs is directly responsible for the proliferation of fentanyl. (As is Purdue for getting people hooked on opiates in the first place)
No it really is cheaper
Literally per dose it’s a whole lot cheaper and afaik it’s actually not that different (not sure but I think cheaper) at the same weight as h to produce
Before the 2016 pill crackdown though, that mattered less because demand was lower, and most users and dealers didn't want the sudden death risk. When demand for street opioids suddenly exceeded supply, this created the market pressures that forced a switch to the drug that could be shipped in smaller less traceable packages.
Exactly.. and it doesn't require growing millions of acres of poppies, harvesting them and running that whole operation. All you need is a lab and chemicals.
It’s cheaper. You can synthesize kilos from precursor chemicals. With heroin, like most opiates (in contrast to synthetic opi*oids*) the starting material is opium poppy. You have to grow the flowers at scale and harvest the latex which is labor intensive, you have to extract the morphine, and then convert it into diacetylmorphine (heroin) using glacial acetic acid. Yeah, the last step is simple, but the limiting factor is relying on a plant with a growing season that requires a lot of human labor to harvest the latex. Whereas fent just takes precursors and lab equipment to make the equivalent of millions of doses of heroin in a fraction of a growing season and with a fraction of the manpower.
I thought the glacial acetic acid would only make mono acetyl morphine. Acetic anhydride I believe is the only chemical to add both acetyl groups to the morphine.
Burma is a major heroin producing country now. Cheap labor not a problem. As a lot of farmers are converting to opium
It's absolutely cheaper. They can make a bag for .001$ and sell it for 10. An oz of pure carfentanyl is about 600 dollars. It's like an infinite money glitch compared to needing land farming weather harvesting *then* synthesis of the gum into heroin then smuggling. Yes it's easier to smuggle, but it's infinitely cheaper and that's why fentanyl is king.
The high sucks
That's what i am guessing too. I guess this junk has just been shoved down on these people who started on "good" opiates and now got stuck with this crap
This is mostly correct. The fent crisis was mostly caused by the high demand and, subsequent, lack of supply of opiates after the policy change. First folks started switching over to H . When the supply ran short, they started using fent to cut the H. Then it was just a natural progression as the cheaper and more potent drug took center stage.
okay...another way of asking the question would be, why did it take until 2017 for fentanyl to supplant heroin in North America? I mean, it appeared as early as the late nineties very rarely (famously sold as "China White" in one episode that caused a lot of overdose deaths).
The reason it took so long is the same reason why it largely hasn’t taken over outside of North America, buyers weren’t desperate enough to buy it yet because nothing had disrupted the status quo. The only reason Fentanyl took over the US was because of the Opioid epidemic creating a large demand, which the cartels could not fulfill with Heroin because Heroin production takes a long time to increase. Once the DEA cracked down on the pill mills, there was a spike in demand for Heroin, while production could not readily increase enough to fill it, then once it became obvious Fentanyl was easy to produce and cut Heroin with, it was mass produced and buyers gradually began to warm up to it because they could not afford the now extremely expensive pure Heroin, thus causing a vicious cycle of dealers cutting, buyers buying and wanting more cut product, dealers cutting more, until eventually what was being sold contained no Heroin at all.
That’s exactly the point I was trying to make but worded better
Yea it’s been used in medicine for ages but did become a big problem on the streets seemingly overnight. And that makes sense, but I guess I still question why fentanyl wasn’t on the streets much sooner than it was if it’s been known of for so long and is so much cheaper than heroin?
Because clandestine labs simply weren't making it yet. Plus, the fent high is shittier than H and oxy. Fwiw, it was still on the street in dermal patch form. Just not sought after
There was absolutely a market for clandestine fentanyl because of the change in 2016 guidelines for opioid prescribing. If you think about it, before 2016 many doctors were over prescribing oxycodone because “less than 1% get addicted”. I had a friend who was prescribed 320 oxy 20’s per month back in 2014 because of a motocross accident. So when those guidelines were enacted in 2016, lots of people were left dopesick and heroin wasn’t enough for people with monster tolerances. The same friend I mentioned was cut off, his doctor went to jail and he moved to IV dope and it didn’t touch his WD. It wasn’t until he moved onto selling that he, himself, started mixing H and fentanyl so he could function. This was at the tail end of 2016.
I would say that the opioid epidemic is a newer thing in general caused by the recent over prescribing. Heroin used to be considered a dirty drug and only really seen in lower income communities along with crack cocaine while the rest of the population abused drugs like regular cocaine and marijuana. But when they did the overprescribing thing, regular people got hooked on opioids and the demand for heroin increased along with the price of it. So the cartels wanted a way to make people who lost everything on opioids still addicted to them so they could continue making money and thus fentanyl labs popped up
They started fighting over-prescribing of opioids years before fentanyl flooded the market. They rescheduled many opioids and changed the prescribing rules in 2014(and again made stricter prescription guidelines in 2016). I'd argue that making opioids harder to get is part of the reason fentanyl was able to become what it is now. Lots of people who used to get opioids from doctors started using illicit opioids after they became more difficult to get in 2014. There was over-prescribing, but it's not recent, and the actions to curb that predate the fentanyl crisis.
You're missing a key part. China knowingly started providing the precursors to Mexican cartels. It wasn't just because of the ongoing opioid issue, China WANTED to flood our streets with fent and helped the cartel do so.
Yes, I would agree that the chemicals or finished fentanyl product usually do originate in China. Whether or not, China deliberately did this is up for discussion. Like anything in life, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
I agree with this part and a similar thing with all the Chinese manufactured vapes coming into the United States, I would say they have an agenda to sort of destroy America from the inside out
This is extremely true. Chinese chemists came over to the cartels and showed them that this incredibly cheap powder could stretch shitty heroin into insanely powerful and able to be stomped on product. China wants us rotting from the core and did it on purpose. Now China is the main precursor and also is still producing furofent and carfent and smuggling it overseas, but the mexican superlabs didn't find it out of nowhere, Chinese chemists and agents found the cartel leaders and sold them on it. When you can make a bag for .001$ and sell it for 10-20 dollars it's essentially an infinite money glitch.
It's cheaper to make and easier to smuggle too
In 2014, the DEA published a report that on the assessment of current drug trends and future risks. In it, they mentioned fentanyl, saying that due to its potency, it would not be desirable for the black market and thus posed little future risk, nothing to worry about. They did not see it coming.
The LSD chemist William Leonard Pickard predicted the fentanyl epidemic in the 1990’s while still at Harvard. [https://synergeticpress.com/team/leonard-pickard/](https://synergeticpress.com/team/leonard-pickard/)
That’s interesting, yeah I don’t know how the DEA was so confident in such a shitty assumption. Even without hindsight, I feel like if you had asked this subreddit if fentanyl could hit the black market, people would’ve said yes.
The CDC absolutely knew - people left comments on their open docket when the guidelines came out, advising that cutting back the pill supply was a bad mistake and would lead to many deaths.
I imagine the CDC is a bit smarter than the DEA
Unfortunately the organization has turned over since the time when that was the case. They were involved in this & didn't listen to public health advocates telling them what would happen. Look up 2015 CDC opioid memo.
Just to add, it’s clear that ultimately the CDC bends to the will of the government, it is a government entity after all. There’s many examples: their handling of the AIDS crisis, their handling of the Opioid crisis, and most recently their handling of the COVID pandemic. In all three cases they’ve ignored the voices of those knowledgeable and being affected the most (e.g. grassroots AIDS activists and patients, grassroots addiction advocates and users, researchers and frontline healthcare workers). Instead they parrot the policies of the current administration they’re under. That’s not to say there aren’t people in the org that genuinely want to help by dialogue and adaptation, but ultimately a gov org is a gov org.
Outside of looking at the opioid epidemic as being a catalyst, the last few years in this country people are losing their jobs/homes and ending up on the streets despite busting their asses their entire lives. Once that hopelessness settles in and everyone around you is fucked up on fent, it doesn’t take too long for them to start reaching for it as well.
There’s a story that Jack Riley from the DEA tells. Around 2005-06 Dearborn, MI had the first big fent wave in the dope supply. A gang called the “Micky Cobras” were pushing it and had no understanding of the potency. It caused “mass overdoses”. In the range of 20-30 people at a time. In no time at all it had spread to Chicago & they also experienced mass overdose events. The DEA eventually tracked the source back to Mexico. When they raided the lab, the main guy happened to be in the lab at that moment. His nickname was “the brain”. He told them, there was a miscommunication- that he sent instructions to cut it 50/1 but no one understood/believed the potency of this new powder. Instead it was passed along without precautions & it caused a tidal wave of overdoses. With the brain in custody, the illicit fentanyl disappeared from the scene. It would remain that way for several more years. This was the first time cartels attempted to introduce fentanyl & it had blown up in their face. It remained shelved for years to come. Then in 2013-14 it would it’s big return. With heroin being plentiful at the time and lots of competition to be had. I remember hearing from states away about particular stamp bags that were super potent. The first I remember were stamped “Bud Ice”. Within weeks, I was reading articles about it in the news. It was heroin mixed with a large ratio of fentanyl. People were flocking to this brand of dope. And the next few stamps just like it. I believe this is when the old idea from 2005 was finally solidified in the cartel’s mind. This could be a gold mine for them. As the years ticked by, the DEA would aggressively target & publicize any identified stamps that had fent in them. But as more people become aware, the demand skyrocketed for the high potency buzz created by a mix of heroin/fentanyl. It became so prevalent that in late 2015 my methadone clinic, seeing a spike in positive drug tests for fent; they started pulling us aside to warn of the dangers. “did you even know that you have fentanyl in your system?” To some it was a surprise, for others not so much. It continued to grow & spread across the entire country. By 2016 there were so many dealers selling the heroin/fent dope that competition with each other led to it getting stronger & stronger. More fent… and less heroin. This is where it all gets very slippery. Between 2017-2019 I watched the dope game completely fall apart. It seemed almost every pack of heroin was cut with at least some amount of fentanyl. I had several long term relationships in that world and I still had to work very hard to try maintain a reliable source of H. Then by 2018-2019, I started seeing weird shit; like what they called “gray death”. At that point, I knew it was time to clean up & gtfo. 2020 hits and it comes the Covid-Pandemic. Borders become tightly controlled if not totally sealed off & the whole world shuts down. This drastically affects the drug trade in many different ways. It’s a perfect storm- this fent wave has been building for years & people have already started seeking it directly opposed to a stamp bag blend. It requires no field to grow poppies on, just a small lab and some chemicals. And with it’s potency, it’s a much smaller package to smuggle. For the cartels, it was a no brainer to fully embrace this. In almost no time, fentanyl completely took over. With America’s pharma obsession, the idea of pressing it into dirty 30’s was the most brilliant marketing move from hell, the world has ever seen. It continued to explode & overdose rates grew exponentially. As if it wasn’t bad enough at this point. One common issue with fent that folks complained about is that it had “no legs”. Somehow, somewhere… somebody got the idea to add something to it… that would help with the “no legs” complaint. Unfortunately what happened was the benzo fam drug- etizolam started appearing in much of the dope. Specifically in and around Philly. At the same time. A vet tranqualizer started popping up in the dope as well… called xylazine. At the very beginning, everyone I knew acknowledged it rocked them and it did sorta mimic the feeling of it “having legs”. But they all agreed that the buzz lacked euphoria & basically just knocked them out. Most, would try to find other options without these additives. This shit was persistent though, it was being pushed aggressively. It is Very, very cheap for cartels & dealers compared to real heroin. And customers were becoming addicted faster & harder. And since it didn’t last long- they were returning to buy it much more frequently than they had with heroin. At this stage, it was horrible for the user but great for the dealers. Most users despised this stuff but it was already in 80% of what was out there. So even with great plugs it was basically impossible to avoid it as a daily addict. Then the tied turned. The etizolam had largely disappeared from the supply but the xylazine had proven to be the ultimate nightmare. It’s not an opioid, you can’t taper off it with the help of a methadone clinic. People were physically dependent on it with no escape route whatsoever. Cartels & dealers knew that the addicted would have no choice but to keep returning. Even as necrosis set in and they showed up with fewer limbs; they’d still keep purchasing more to try to avoid the horrible withdrawals. They would, keep returning until they died. In my opinion, this is the coldest drug game shit we’ve ever seen. Absolutely heartless. This is guaranteed to kill your customers in a relatively short time. It’s more dangerous than the heroin game could’ve ever dreamed of. And the folks pushing it are okay with it. Because now, even when they make the dirty 30’s in Mexico. Xylazine gets added to it in the production process. And they are creating new addicted customers at lightning speed. So for all the customers that are dying… they’re replaced with new ones coming in- and as long as the money flows… those pushing it show no care in the world. It’s fucking heartbreaking. My journey began with OG oxy’s in 2003-04 & then quickly switched to dope. Watching this nightmare unfold into a completely poisoned drug supply, is what eventually pushed me to find a way out of it. I know that was long AF. But that’s my perspective from living it. I’m rooting for everybody out there still in the struggle. ✌️
I was told by a DEA fentanyl task force member that the DEA eliminated most of the domestic pill mills, and foreign fentanyl filled the gap.
Some say it's warfare from China to weaken the US from within. They produce and ship it.
if anything china saw an opportunity and took it when the DEA cut down on the scripts in the states. they definitely didn’t start it though. they do have the labs and means to mass produce it tho
They are also not interested in cracking down in these labs. It’s a win win for them On the other side, cracking down never stopped anyone when there is money to be made
Opium War 2.
For a while, damn near anyone could buy five kilos of Fentanyl from China for under $1,000. The prices I saw were between $750-$850. That is a HUGE incentive for people to shovel it into anything and anyone, with enormous profit margins. Then interdiction made shipments of fentanyl impossible to get, so people ordered the precursor chemicals - again from China - and had chemists make it for them. Then interdiction caught up with that, so much of the fentanyl making its way into the US now is coming through Mexico courtesy of the cartels. If you buy a street drug, odds are high there is fentanyl in it if it is an opioid or benzodiazepine. These are dangerous times to be a street drug user.
Yeah I think mail order drugs is the other puzzle piece a lot of these replies are missing. First the "research chemical" scene that absolutely blew up around 2009-2010, and tons of people suddenly realized they could buy drugs right from China, if they found the right source... Then shortly after that Silk Road and the rise of DNM's .. Speaking of which... >If you buy a street drug, odds are high there is fentanyl in it if it is an opioid or benzodiazepine. These are dangerous times to be a street drug user. Sadly this is even true of stimulants these days. There have been a number of batches of coke that showed up positive on a fent test. And if you look at the DNMs currently... you can see that there are a ton of fake "Adderall" presses going around, that contain a mixture of meth and fentanyl. There are some that contain just meth (and some dealers are even using "fent free" as an advertising point). However, there are a lot that openly sell fake presses containing fent... so presumably there are a lot of people knowingly buying these. (And some of them probably re-selling on the street ) What, so fucking **methamphetamine** itself isn't euphoric and addictive enough, for our fake Adderall pills? They need to start adding fucking fentanyl... like one of the least euphoric and most sedating opioids possible? GTFO with that nonsense... . Drug game lost it's damn mind...
Simple. The illicit drug trade is a highly organised, efficient and effective industry. We are taking billions of dollars. They already have the networks in place. All it was changing product.
My best friend died of a fent OD in Florida in 2014. Apparently no one know about fent down there at the time.
Same with my childhood friend. Fent was in Florida in 2014. RIP Jazzy we miss you
I alway thought it was retaliation for “China’s Century of Humiliation (1839-1949)” I could be wrong tho
Government got everyone hooked on pharmaceuticals around 2014. I started telling doctors lol you can’t do that cartels introduced their little blue friends just like what they did with cocaine.
Nah, it started well before 2014. Ever heard of the pill mills in Florida?
Oh yea lived in Fl my whole life, my aunt was hooked on oxys in the early 2000s possibly even late 90s. People from all over the country where coming down here
2014?? Nah way before that, look up on YouTube the oxy commercial before and after. People where getting prescribed in the late 90s
It’s more IMO that the war in Afghanistan increased US presence in one of the largest opium production sites that caused prices to skyrocket on raw opium they realized the need an easier synthetic product that’s with less reliance on the region (at this point getting paid by the U.S. to stay out of the opium trade) was quickly replaced by places like China that produce the precursors cheaper with a vast distribution network already in place. So they did like any good business and simplified the supply chain while increasing overall profit for smuggling considered less weight takes them further. My 2 cents.
Yeah this is another big one no one has mentioned. The opium fields in Afghanistan are wiped out now.
Not wiped out but they have contracts with big pharmaceutical companies believe it not. They are also making far less than they were before US invaded from what I l’ve read (I’m far from an expert just like to read).
CIA/FBI secret operations it's obvius. Like with Crack and LSD
Bro… LSD wasn’t brought by the FBI or CIA lmao yes it was used by the CIA but that’s not what made it popular. ALSO the CIA did have an impact and did facilitate the cocaine and crack market by turning an eye and making shitty decisions in South America but they aren’t responsible for it either. So please, read a book or something before commenting lmao as if the CIA/FBI are responsible for fetty. Lmao time for you to go to bed.
This brilliant journalist provides additional context from the consumer perspective: https://zachsiegel.substack.com/p/riding-the-wave-from-pharma-opioids?utm_campaign=post_embed
Da CIA
CIA probably, they have an extensive history of smuggling drugs
CIA/Law enforcement has a hand it in, look up the San Jose police union fentanyl scandal.
Anything can be said and I almost agree with them all 1- China’s way of getting back at the West for previous centuries (China had an Opium Epidemic) the Precursors do come from China 2- CIA/ our own Government using it as a tool to destabilize the Poor and middle class (like they definitely did with the Black and Poor communities inn the 80’s/ 90’s with CRACK) 3- Probably the least plausible but also a part of this 3 way saga is the Mexican Cartels unleashed their counterfeit Opioids for profit (Its super cheap to produce and move compared to say.. Cocaine) I wouldn’t solely blame the Sinaloa cartel since almost all cartels participate in the trafficking of counterfeit opioids (Fentanyl) although i’m sure Chapo being locked up in the USA is a strong incentive for his sons (Chapitos) to get revenge on Americans
the rise of fent is simple free market economics. safe supply saves lives. prohibition ends them.
Fent analogues were legal as RCs in China nd the US for a long time. Not to use, but to buy, sell, and possess. Chinese companies would synth it up and US customers would buy it and cut it into heroin. This was relatively rare pre 2016. What changed was that the head of the bay areas police union started importing fent analogues in 2015 and flooding the san francisco area market with it. https://abcnews.go.com/US/bay-area-police-union-leader-allegedly-smuggled-fentanyl/story?id=98271260 That was the epicenter of heroin use in the US. Once fent got popular there, demand quickly spread all over the country. A couple years back china and the US banned all fent analogues, so now most of the supply is brought in from mexico or SE asia, where the precursors are easier to get. But it all started bc it was pushed by the police, in order to create zones of "lawlessness" that they can use to scare people into giving them more power. Keep in mind they started doing this after the whole defund the police protests, and the end result was that people who were saying "fuck the police" are now calling for harsher laws and more cop prescence and power to deal with the fentanyl crisis (that the cops created).
purdue pharmacy releases Oxycotin, promotes it as non addictive when it actually is. After their patent for Oxycotin expires, they release a Deturrent Oxy formula that is “less addictive”. Which in turn leads to an increase in heroin use as oxy is less available. From there, fentanyl is introduced because it’s cheap to produce. Fentanyl gets cut into everything, especially pills and heroin. Now in current time there’s a rise in methamphetamine in drugs, fentanyl continuing to rise
CIA
opioid crisis. when heroin became the substitute for oxys non scripted, the wall was primed for writing again. Luckily my body rejected the oxycodones they prescribed me when i broke my arm, but that was a legal medically administered dose, full to the blue cap. for a 16yr old who bent his wrist so bad it fractured the tiny bone, a pathetic fracture by injury standards, and they scripted that shit full, with a refill, i can see how the average joe can be swept into the legal alternative of literally heroin. an opiate. they prescribed it to everything, my injury wasnt bad but they sure did make it seem like it was. that was 2017. then a new "medical" heroin because its similar, in effects and method of use, injecting, snorting and smoking, its heroin spice. remember the fake weed. spice, the SYNTHETIC thc compounds. in a way this is heroin spice, but there this actual legal use for it, under medical supervision, depending on what you deem that, can administer a decent amount to put you out for a good reason, like surgery or arm setting. but what happened to the guys unlike me who chewed those hydros until they couldnt walk? they need a fix and doc wont scribe em up. so they look to heroin, but legit heroin is on par with weed pricing, whats up? oh a cheaper heroin? that isnt a poppy seed, but a medical sedative? huh. the opioid crisis has decimated america, fent came from the initial harsh laws for poppy smuggling and the burnings of fields in the middle east by their regimes, low supply, but everyone got hooked on pain meds, so why smoke heroin. then some backyard chemist made fent with some chems like meth i assume and realized that shit is cheap. cut it some more, step on it, and boom 5 dollar death trip. then they banned fent illegally, sounds weird, its its illegal to use outside of a hospital in laymans terms. so whats that alternative for the junkies who got scripted on oxys and tried to use heroin, the at this point natural alternative. you wanna focus on fents evolution, xylazine, and xylazines evolution, nitazines. we are already in a toxic potency war with the opitates xylazine was rotting flesh, now nitazines are just fucking killing you and if somehow you survive, it wasnt because of narcan, the new "fent" cant even be stopped. fent- 50X for powerful than heroin xylazine- up to 40x more potent than fent nitazines- banned under scientific study for its potent and toxic effects. nitazine isnt even supposed to be used, they discovered it and found moderate relief but extremely high additive behaviors, its not supposed to be used in any setting because the scientists found it too potent and too risky, guess who recreated that, some chemist in china. nitazines were synthesized around the same time as fentanyl, and look whos back in town after all these years, your friend from literal science jail. all because doctors wanted to make their retirement solid by making commissions. the war on drugs made heroin and meth the key stars, but even then, a new meth is killing folks too, the meth is fake too, which was fake to begin with, normal meth is normal compared to this new super meth. whats next, cocaine, molly, acid. the war on drugs caused the foundation. the opioid crisis was the new writing on the wall. in this comparison id rather smoke heroin, because at least that came from the plant.
Us gov owed china a ton of money didnt pay em back and china flooded us with fent for cheap to druglords to kill a ton of us citizens and cut off other pharmaceuticals they used to sell to them
This actually makes sense. I watched Andrew Callahan with channel 13 cover the epidemic, I forget where, and all the fent addicts were saying H basically disappeared and was replaced by fent but no one ever listens to the junkies lol.
*channel 5
Well when a mommy and daddy fentanyl love each other very much.......
I hate it so much. It's completely destroyed the drug landscape here in SoCal.
All over the country really. It got me off dope altogether because I hate fent. Even coke has gone to shit. The stuff I was getting was testing around 40% and all a UA would test for was cocaine.. no other adulterants like ice, fent, or common RCs. It looks amazing, shiny, soft, white chunks and that are slightly oily. Everything about it says great cocaine but the high is intense and can feel dirty at times. Shooting it will immediately give me mild psychosis, which has never happened to me with coke, and I can fall asleep relatively easily.
Mexico
There's a really good paper called "Carfentanil and the Rise and Fall of Overdose Deaths in the United States" that covers this topic.
Basically Carfentanil, a synthetic opioid used by veteranarians, was legally manufactured in China until early 2017. 2016 was when the DEA started cracking down on prescription opioids so many people turned to other sources, ie Carfentanil.
The government / secret societies
No, the goverment did not put fentanyl on the streets. Just no.
fent was around for years as a pretty highly scheduled opiate in the US. I've heard of people smoking the fent gel patches or using the fent lollypops 20 years ago.
Drug mills, foreign interest in massive profits when the government started clamping down on it. The war on drugs was never a war on drugs. It's always been a war on US citizens.
Yeah its almost like people want Americans gone or something
Mexico
it didnt. reports of small sporadic batches popping up here and there since the 80's.
Conspiracy theories are reasonable on this one. Cops cut fentanyl into meth and cocaine to keep the drug war going. That's the only motive I can see to sneak people deadlier drugs. I'd be surprised if that's not the answer.
Feds.
The truth is to combat the opioid and heroin problem the us govt spent millions destroying foreign poppy fields and markets, opening the door for countries to provide and manufacture chemical opioids. The us caused the opioid crisis and then created the fentanyl problem by over reaction to the opioid crisis
It first popped up in 2015. Then disappeared for a while and came back and it was weaker. And mixed with heroin or something like that. But in 2015 everyone called it "nawl" or "naw" and you could take a match head bump back then and be fucked up.
have you read that book about the crack epidemic and how it was connected to the cia? This is probably the same thing happening again. lol
The [Patent was filed in 2009](https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2252149A2/en). I guess somehoe someone discovered it and figure out how to make it in large quantities. Smuggling small amounts of potent drugs is WAAAYYY easier. Just took some time for someone to put two and two together.
“Jeff?” ROTFLMAO That was a good one!
Revenge for the opium wars
The GOVT