Why are drug dealers putting fentanyl in everything? (Part 1)

0:00Hi, I'm PJ Vogt. This is Search Engine. Each week we answer a question we have about the world. No question too big, no question too small. This week on the show, we're tackling a very basic question about a very serious subject, fentanyl. Our question, why are drug dealers poisoning their own customers by sneaking fentanyl into other drugs? We'll get into it after these ads. This episode of Surge Engine is brought to you in part by SurveyMonkey. Look, we get it. You can hardly go anywhere or do anything these days without hearing about AI this or AI that. And if you're like most people, when it comes to AI, you're impressed but have a few concerns.

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1:37Welcome to Search Engine. I'm PJ Vogt. There have been all these stories about people dying from fentanyl-laced drugs. I read these stories in the news. I just hear them in my community. Fentanyl-laced cocaine, Xanax, synthetic weed. I recently read about fentanyl showing up in store-bought weed gummies outside Philadelphia, although the tests there seem a bit inconclusive. But the question I've always had seemed kind of like a simple one, maybe bordering on naive. why would a drug dealer do this? Like, why would you sneak a very lethal drug into drugs that are much less lethal, or in some cases, not lethal at all?

2:12I want to say, I am a sophisticated enough adult to understand that drug dealers are not, like, the most well-regulated or universally altruistic class of business person. But still, even an illegal business is a business. What kind of business survives while killing its own customers? It didn't even seem to make sense in ruthless capitalism logic. We got an answer, which we're going to share with you. But we're going to tell you the story a little bit differently than how we normally would. We're going to tell you the answer from two perspectives. Episode one, The Undercover Reporter. We'll speak with a journalist who's covered this for years, who will explain how fentanyl became a street drug in the first place.

2:52And then episode two, The Dealer. We'll talk to a person who's used fentanyl, who sold it to others, and who will explain how the strange logic that drives his world has now infiltrated ours.

3:08Let's begin.

3:19The Belgian doctor who invented fentanyl had a reputation that almost could not be further from his terrifying drug. Paul Janssen, widely considered to be one of the most important pharmaceutical researchers of all time. Janssen died in 2003, but this is him being interviewed on what is basically Belgian PBS towards the end of his life, talking about his long career.

3:45He was really a genius. He invented over 100 medicines. I spoke to writer Ben Westhoff, author of Fentanyl, Inc., about Janssen's legacy. He told me that Janssen actually invented fentanyl a long time ago, back in 1959. He was trying to find something that was better for hospital procedures like open-heart surgery. What made fentanyl superior to morphine is that it comes on faster and it goes away faster. So people who are, say, in open-heart surgery don't have to be there for as long um it doesn't cause nausea and um it's basically kind of the perfect hospital drug this feels like it feels like i'm like asking a question about a musician or something but like does he have any other like hits that i would have heard of yeah there's like a diarrhea medicine i think imodium a huge fan of imodium yep imodium that's him wow yeah imodium has done some good work with me.

4:48I feel more grateful to him by the minute. Paul Janssen, the man who invented the drug that, according to some studies, kills more American adults under the age of 45 than guns, COVID, or cancer. In his lifetime, he was regarded as kind of a medical saint. And for decades, it looked like fentanyl would just be another feather in his already pretty feathery cap. Ben says Janssen never dreamed that his drug would play a role in taking so many lives. We couldn't imagine it. But then again, neither could the U.S. government. What's really strange is that nobody saw this coming at all. In fact, I found this DEA report from 2015 that said basically when it came to fentanyl, you know, there's nothing to see here.

5:35In 2015? Yeah, as recently as 2015, they said that it was so potent that users just didn't want it. The risk of death was too high that we didn't have to worry about it. And it was only one year later that fentanyl was killing more people than any other drug in the U.S. The DEA missed fentanyl. They did not see it coming. According to their estimates, only 700 people died from fentanyl overdose in 2014. But very soon after, the problem would be clear. In 2016, according to the NIH, almost 20 ,000 people would die from synthetic opioid overdoses, most of that fentanyl. What happened? At the time, it was a mystery.

6:22But one thing that the DEA may have missed in 2015 was that while yes, fentanyl was a terrible drug for consumers, deadly with a short-acting high, it was an incredibly attractive drug for dealers because it was just so cheap to make. Fentanyl is much cheaper than heroin because it's synthetic. It's made in a lab. So heroin, of course, comes from the opium poppy. And to grow poppies, you need a lot of land, time, and it's much more expensive and it's much more, you know, subject to law enforcement discovering it. Whereas with fentanyl, you can just make it in some clandestine lab. So it's much cheaper to make and at the same time it's much more potent.

7:06And so it's just incredibly profitable. Most products succeed because there's a big consumer demand for them. Not because there's a big producer supply of them. But you can flip that logic if the product you have a big supply of happens to be incredibly addictive. For the people supplying fentanyl, the drug had another advantage besides just being cheap. It was that much of the supply was being produced in a country where it was actually sort of quasi-legal. China. China was the principal supplier of fentanyl to the United States starting in 2013. Not long after, the Chinese government officially banned fentanyl, but they were slow to ban analogs of the drug.

7:49Basically, slight tweaks to the recipe that added a molecule here or there, but left the basic chemical structure of fentanyl intact. And so there's this constant cat and mouse game in China when these chemists would create a new type of fentanyl, a new fentanyl analog, and then the government would ban it. And so they'd stop making that and then they'd tweak the chemical a little bit more to have a new legal variation. And so the result is a bunch of gray market chemicals that are legal in China, but illegal in the U.S. In 2018, Ben gets curious about those Chinese labs, and he decides he wants to try to visit one.

8:33Which begs the question, how does an American living in St. Louis find his way into a Chinese fentanyl lab? Obviously, he begins to search on one of the darkest, least understood parts of the internet. This guy actually had a LinkedIn profile. Wait, the fentanyl dealer had a LinkedIn profile? Yeah, you know, he didn't advertise fentanyl on his page. He offered all these other chemicals and he did these kind of custom synthesis for whatever you wanted. And so I asked if he sold these different fentanyl analogs and he did. And so I met him at this train station in Shanghai and he spent like most of the day vetting me.

9:16You know, he actually asked me point blank if I was a journalist. what did you what was your story you know somebody asks you three times if you're a journalist you have to tell the truth uh yeah i mean i was trying to think what's a drug dealer name and so for some reason i came up with johnny webster was my name and um i said i was from new york which is also a lie and basically to not get too far over my head what i said was that i wasn't actually the drug dealer, but my friend was. And I just happened to be in China, and my drug-dealing friend asked me if I could visit this lab to do some reconnaissance for him.

9:57And if this lab lived up to our quality standards, then he would make a big buy from them. And that was enough to get you a meeting? Yeah, I mean, we met at this train station, and then he said, well, we're going to go to my office. Which state of USA do you come from? New York. New York. New York. New York is very beautiful. Ben secretly recorded his meeting with the guy who ran the lab. And his office was actually his apartment where he lived with his family. His wife and daughter were out, but it was in the penthouse of this really nice high rise in a gated community. It's my home. I live in my home.

10:37Oh, it's your home. Okay. Very nice. The lab is about 30 miles away from here in Minhaan province. You said 30 miles? And, you know, he talked and he showed me the list of chemicals and the prices. And then he still wasn't sure about me, so he took me out to lunch. Where'd you guys go? Well, he asked if I wanted to go to McDonald's. I asked my driver to take us to the McDonald's. Oh, okay. Because you're an American. He's like, it's American. They must love McDonald's. And I said, well... Oh, no, I do. I like China's food. You like Chinese food? Yeah, I like Chinese food, yes. Very good. But McDonald's is okay.

11:17It's your choice. They do end up going to a local Chinese restaurant. In China, these establishments are called restaurants. Which was very good. And we just sort of shot the shit, and somewhere along the way he decided I passed muster. And so he called his driver, who came and picked me up. This guy didn't speak any English, the driver, and he was kind of muscle bound. He looked like he might be the guy who would break my kneecaps if they found out I was lying or something. But finally, we were in kind of like the deep exurbs, I guess you would call them. And we arrived to this really bland, generic looking business park, a new construction building.

11:58And we went inside. You know, it could have been anything in there. What it reminded me most of was just like a high school chemistry lab. It was not like super sort of fancy, sophisticated, but it wasn't like underground either. It was all totally functional. And did it feel like being in a place that felt dangerous and illicit or did it feel like being at somebody's job? I would say a little bit of both. It was the middle of winter and it was really cold, but all the windows were open and the smell was really strong. You know, it didn't seem quite professional in that way. I had to like, I mean, even he, the chemist, his name was Dawson Lee.

12:38He pulled his shirt up over his nose. What Ben means is that the chemist was using his T-shirt as protection instead of a mask or respirator. You know, and I was like, oh, that doesn't quite seem right. You know, and it became really clear that I didn't know what I was talking about. And I think they just, you know, they chalked it up to, I would give my friend the report of this place, and then I would get back with them and give them my real order. Ben obviously did not place a real order, which didn't seem to bother the chemist. Ben says the chemist still sends him cake emojis on Skype on his birthday.

13:18During Ben's China visit, he ended up visiting several fentanyl producers. Each time, he found companies that seemed to toe the line between legitimate business and underground drug operation. They sold other chemicals, not just fentanyl, and they wouldn't announce that they were selling fentanyl on their website. But in conversation, they were happy to make a deal. Ben thinks that part of the reason he was welcomed with such open arms was because it wasn't so unusual for Americans to show up doing what he was pretending to do, showing up to buy fentanyl from Chinese labs. Although the more typical route for fentanyl is to go from China to the Mexican drug cartels, who then smuggle it into the States.

13:55So mostly what you have coming across the border are these cartel affiliates who are bringing fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, and meth. More deadly fentanyl has been seized at our border than ever before. Often in secret compartments and vehicles. Agents found the drugs hidden in the gas tank and a spare tire. Trucks that are bringing other products. A 26-year-old man attempted to smuggle the drugs into the U.S. with a produce tractor trailer. The driver, of course, arrested him. Some is taken across by drones. There's underground tunnels. You know, I've heard about people taking the drugs on surfboards, like, around the wall in San Diego.

14:38Wait, they surf around the border wall? Yeah, I was actually there right at the coast where the border wall ends. and it really doesn't go out into the water very far at all. It's like you can swim around it really easily. This pipeline was reaching an American market full of consumers who had not initially wanted fentanyl but would ultimately end up demanding large amounts of it. And that demand would be there not because it had been stoked by Mexican drug cartels. Those addicted users had been created by someone else. After the break, the dealers, the Sacklers, and a 5 ,000-year-old problem.

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17:57Welcome back to the show. There's this part of the story of the opioid epidemic that I feel like gets lost sometimes that I'm always trying to explain and can never quite articulate. I want to try one more time now. So fentanyl, oxycontin, heroin, morphine, opium, these drugs are all very similar. They're chemical cousins. If it's found in nature, it's called an opiate. If it's made in the lab, an opioid. We can call some of these drugs new, but human beings have been getting high off of opiates for over 5 ,000 years. Since antiquity, we've known that if you dry the latex of poppy seeds, the same seeds you find on your bagel, There's a resin produced, which can take away pain and induce euphoria.

18:39And we've known that those highs can lead to tolerance, to addiction, to death. Cleopatra is rumored to have killed herself with a drug cocktail containing opium. The Romans used it in poisons, so did the ancient Greeks. Opiates relax you. You die because your body forgets to regulate its breathing. Dying because you're in such euphoria, your body stops seeking oxygen, is how Socrates may have left this earth. And it's how 80 ,000 Americans died last year. Drugs stay the same. Their effects are pretty consistent. What changes is the stories we tell around them. Stories about their usefulness, stories about their danger.

19:18We can forget that these stories are in flux, are being contested, but they are. Morphine was discovered in 1803, but it was replaced for a while by a better hospital painkiller from Bayer Pharmaceutical. Heroin.

19:36First synthesized in 1874, heroin was considered a good painkiller in the U.S., before it was seen as an addictive street drug. In the U.K., a doctor might still prescribe heroin, controlled, monitored, to a kid with a broken bone.

19:52What I'm trying to say is that when we decide if a drug is dangerous or not, it's not just about the drug's inherent properties, it's about whether our culture is telling the right story about it. Have we attached the proper warning label to this thing? What is so striking to me about our opioid epidemic that so many of us are dying from is that we're dying not because we invented something new and dangerous, but because we forgot or convinced ourselves or were convinced that something old and dangerous was actually new and safe. Oxycontin, the painkiller that started the opioid crisis, was really just a stronger version of oxycodone, which has been around since 1916.

20:32But what was really new about OxyContin was the story it was wrapped in. This is the part of all this I think most people are familiar with. My favorite book about it is Patrick Raddenkief's Empire of Pain. It's about not just the introduction of OxyContin, but really how one family, the Sacklers, made billions of dollars by rewriting the story of the poppy seed. Patrick Raddenkief tells the story of the Sacklers, owners of the privately held company Purdue Pharma. Purdue formulated OxyContin. Crucially, according to Purdue, OxyContin was not addictive. This is a big deal because opioids have traditionally been some of the most addictive drugs mankind has synthesized.

21:13To say that a new opioid painkiller could be both more powerful and less addictive than what preceded it is a huge deal. Purdue claimed the key to all this was a time-release coating on the pill. A time-release coating that made it so that it could not be abused. Once you've found the right doctor and have told him or her about your pain, don't be afraid to take what they give you. Often, it will be an opioid medication. This is a clip from a 1998 Purdue marketing video. It was intended for doctors to show their patients to assuage any fears someone might have about taking on an Oxy prescription.

21:49Some patients may be afraid of taking opioids because they're perceived as too strong or addictive. But that is far from actual fact. Less than 1 % of patients taking opioids actually become addicted. The actual numbers? We now think that addiction rates were 10 times higher than what that doctor claimed. One in 10 patients. As it turned out, you could crush up the pills and snort or inject them. The coding did very little. As evidence mounted of this reality, Purdue ignored it. Purdue executives continued to aggressively market their drug. They fought court challenges. They made billions of dollars as tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands of Americans died from opioid overdoses.

22:35Their story of a drug called Oxycontin that was supposed to be safe helps explain the rise of fentanyl, a drug we've always known was deadly. You'll remember that reporter Ben Westhoff told us how in 2015, fentanyl was not really on the DEA's radar. They estimated that the fentanyl overdose deaths that previous year were at just 700 people nationwide. The year after that, the U.S. government steps in to regulate Oxycontin for the first time. In 2016, the CDC issued a directive that greatly reduced the flow of Oxycontin prescriptions. For Americans who'd become addicted to a drug they were told was not addictive, this was a problem.

23:12They'd been cut off. And many discovered they'd become something they were told they'd never be. Drug addicts. Here's reporter Ben Westhoff. All these people took these pills for legitimate reasons, prescribed by their doctor, became addicted. And then when their prescriptions ran out, they sought out illicit heroin on the street. So this happened so much that by one study, I think showed that it created a million new opioid users in America. So suddenly there's this huge new market, and there's just not enough heroin to feed it all. It's just like fentanyl basically steps in to fill this void.

23:57Since 2016, fentanyl has continued to fill the void, a pipeline running into the United States without much interruption. So it goes, precursor goes to Mexico, gets refined in Mexico. Mexican dealers ship it over the border to the U.S. What are the, like, the dealers in the U.S., like, do you have a sense of who they are? Yeah, everything comes over the border in places like San Diego, you know, or El Paso, Texas. And then it kind of, like, fans out. So with each rung of the distribution ladder, it gets a little further away from the cartels. So eventually it's distributed by these different regional gangs.

24:37You know, in California, there's like these MS-13 type gangs. In St. Louis, where I live, it's like African-American gangs. In West Virginia, it's like white, you know, family-run organizations. It's all very regional. Here's a question that I actually haven't seen answered. That's really basic. What is the fentanyl high like? Like, what does it feel like? I've never taken fentanyl, but I've heard that fentanyl is described as like a less soulful high than heroin. I mean, there's all this sort of romanticizing of heroin from like jazz players in the 1960s and things like that. But one thing that I know for sure is that fentanyl, what makes it such a great hospital drug, is that it doesn't last very long.

25:29And so this is great if you're operating on someone, but for an addicted user, this is really bad because it means that you have to re-up so quickly. And so where one dose of heroin might last you the better part of a day, the fentanyl high is going to wear off in just a few hours. And so it leaves you kind of scrambling to find more. I actually spend a decent amount of time lurking on the subreddit for heroin. In case you haven't noticed, I'm pretty curious about opioids. Partly because I have friends who've overdosed and I have questions I can't ask them. But even if I didn't miss those people, I'd be curious anyway.