Like heroin, fentanyl delivers a euphoric high.

August 6, 2024 5:01 AM

We Bought Everything Needed to Make $3 Million Worth of Fentanyl. All It Took Was $3600 and a Web Browser. (slReuters; interactive)
posted by Kitteh (47 comments total)

Damn, I guess solid news reporting isn't enough to keep the lights on anymore?
posted by jy4m at 5:24 AM on August 6 [17 favorites]

The accompanying article describing the synthesis isn't bad at all - probably because they had a good consultant in the form of Prof Andrea Holmes from Doane U.
posted by lalochezia at 5:39 AM on August 6

why
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:43 AM on August 6 [3 favorites]

The total cost of the chemicals and equipment Reuters purchased, paid mainly in Bitcoin: $3,607.18.

Oh look a real use for bitcoin!
posted by chavenet at 5:43 AM on August 6 [15 favorites]

Damn, I guess solid news reporting isn't enough to keep the lights on anymore?


This article is an exemplar of solid news reporting.
posted by lalochezia at 5:44 AM on August 6 [21 favorites]

I think the joke jy4m is making is that they plan to sell the fentanyl.
posted by Night_owl at 5:47 AM on August 6 [19 favorites]

Now I want to see NileRed order as many as these as are legal and use them to make artificial flavourings.
posted by ambrosen at 6:23 AM on August 6 [3 favorites]

I ain't clicking on this link! Cop! Entrapment!
posted by NoMich at 6:23 AM on August 6 [6 favorites]

Yes, but which web browser makes the best fentanyl?
posted by star gentle uterus at 6:44 AM on August 6 [10 favorites]

“ The core precursors Reuters bought would have yielded enough fentanyl powder to make at least 3 million tablets, with a potential street value of $3 million – a conservative estimate based on prices cited by U.S. law enforcement agencies in published reports over the past six months.

The total cost of the chemicals and equipment Reuters purchased, paid mainly in Bitcoin: $3,607.18.”

This is one of the biggest problems with fentanyl on the streets - it’s cheap as hell compared to other drugs. At a couple of bucks a pop on the expensive end, the drug maker is still making a hefty margin. People who become homeless typically aren’t addicted to drugs when they lose their home, but many of them become addicted out on the streets. With the cost of a dose being so low, and the drug being so addictive, it’s very easy for them to keep their habit going and it’s very hard to get someone clean. And of course the War On Drugs(tm) demonstrated that we can’t enforce our way out of the problem. It’s all really fucked.
posted by azpenguin at 6:44 AM on August 6 [14 favorites]

“We can ship safely to Mexico,” Jenny had written in Spanish on the encrypted message platform Telegram in July 2023, when the reporter first inquired about the chemical. “No one knows what we ship.”

Operating from what is arguably the largest surveillance state on the planet? Riiiiight.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:46 AM on August 6

I think the joke jy4m is making is that they plan to sell the fentanyl.


it me
posted by lalochezia at 6:49 AM on August 6 [5 favorites]

Still for sale, although way more expensive than fentanyl, apparently.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:53 AM on August 6

This is one of the biggest problems with fentanyl on the streets - it’s cheap as hell compared to other drugs.

Honestly, this article was eye-opening for me. I didn't realize just how cheap it is to produce and how, unlike heroin and cocaine, doesn't rely on any sort of actual crop to be made. This morning I was reading in the CBC that Canadian organized crime groups are now one of the leaders for making and exporting illegal fentanyl tablets precisely because of how easy it is to get the ingredients online and DIY. It makes an already awful situation more fraught.
posted by Kitteh at 6:55 AM on August 6 [4 favorites]

We Bought Everything Needed to Make $3 Million Worth of Fentanyl. Here's Why That's Bad for Joe Biden.
posted by credulous at 6:59 AM on August 6 [6 favorites]

Wow. Today I learnt a lot.
But what I knew already was that it all started with over-prescription of opioids.
I wonder if someone will ever figure out how to end this?
posted by mumimor at 7:14 AM on August 6

People who become homeless typically aren’t addicted to drugs when they lose their home, but many of them become addicted out on the streets.

This has totally not been my experience.
posted by Melismata at 7:14 AM on August 6 [1 favorite]

Ugh, another one of these sites where you have to wade through a whole bunch of excess verbiage to just get to the recipe.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:20 AM on August 6 [72 favorites]

Operating from what is arguably the largest surveillance state on the planet?

Why should China care? The CPC don't have to do anything but be complicit by inaction. Doing nothing is easy. And very easy to deny, with for-show police actions every now and then.

The cruel rhyme here is that the British did far worse with the opium trade. I imagine this isn't lost on the CPC leadership.
posted by bonehead at 7:55 AM on August 6 [6 favorites]

I don’t have the patience to read this. Do they perpetuate the myth that a tiny trace of fentanyl on the skin can kill you, like all American cops?
posted by teece303 at 8:08 AM on August 6 [4 favorites]

This has totally not been my experience

That’s fair, I’m just speaking from a point of view of having talked to some people that deal with this up close, as well as reading a lot of experiences. Estimates are that a quarter to a third of people on the streets have drug addictions of some sort, and also that most people become addicted after becoming homeless. (You’re feeling hopeless, life is awful, and someone says here, try this, and it’s the most incredible feeling you’ve ever had.) I’m in Arizona, and the homeless population has absolutely skyrocketed out here over the last few years, particularly as rents and utility costs have gone up, sometimes as much as double. You can’t drive anywhere without seeing an encampment. There have been homeless people sleeping in the desert near my house. I’ve seen homeless people smoking drugs (beleive it’s fent) off of foil quite a few times. Benzos are also common on the streets. It’s a public health crisis we weren’t really anywhere close to equipped to deal with before the numbers of users went so high, and now the overwhelmed social services are doing their best to help who they can. Fentanyl addiction has really, really made their job very hard. The city has been doing their best to house people in need but there’s not much space available.
posted by azpenguin at 8:11 AM on August 6 [8 favorites]

But what I knew already was that it all started with over-prescription of opioids.

This is actually completely false, so if you "knew" that, you need better information.
posted by adrienneleigh at 8:26 AM on August 6 [4 favorites]

Heya, *scratches arm* you have any of that "better information"?

I was also of the understanding that the opioid epidemic really took off with the Sackler rewarded over prescription of pharmaceuticals.

I am happy to learn otherwise, but a quick Google search seems to confirm my understanding.
posted by jellywerker at 9:27 AM on August 6 [3 favorites]

Pill presses are also heavily regulated in Canada. I wanted to procure a die set to pair with an arbor press to turn powdered drink mix into tablets and found out that's not a good idea legally.

Do they perpetuate the myth that a tiny trace of fentanyl on the skin can kill you, like all American cops?

The article is almost entirely on supply chain and production. It's infuriatingly formated, at least on my mobile browser but otherwise straight forward and low hype.
posted by Mitheral at 9:29 AM on August 6

China imposes restrictions on fentanyl chemicals after pressure from US
posted by chromecow at 10:04 AM on August 6 [1 favorite]

Oh look a real use for bitcoin!

… what did you think people were doing with it?
posted by atoxyl at 10:06 AM on August 6 [3 favorites]

I wonder if someone will ever figure out how to end this?
Buprenorphine appears to be helpful [nih]
posted by HearHere at 10:30 AM on August 6 [2 favorites]

As a parent this absolutely terrifies me
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:46 AM on August 6 [1 favorite]

Our local Sheriff's department and DA's office have been spending huge amounts on billboards to make Fentanyl seem pretty damned cool, and making up fake deaths as part of this whole PR pitch, with profit margins and ad campaigns like this it makes one wonder how widespread the practice of leaders in the "law enforcement" community involved in the distribution of Fentanyl is.

(Read any of the mainstream articles on Canadian vs Mexican production of Fentanyl to see all sorts of racist bias in play... Yay prohibition, I guess.)
posted by straw at 11:01 AM on August 6 [3 favorites]

I was also of the understanding that the opioid epidemic really took off with the Sackler rewarded over prescription of pharmaceuticals.

The “prescription epidemic” era did lead to an increase in opioid deaths but it got exponentially worse after the crackdown on prescriptions as fentanyl became common. And we’re well past the point that all the people using fentanyl would have started on opioids in the pill era.

Also I tend to think it’s a bit misleading how that era tends to get framed in terms of an excess of “legitimate” pain prescriptions, and not massive knowing diversion of pharmaceuticals.
posted by atoxyl at 11:01 AM on August 6 [5 favorites]

Buprenorphine appears to be helpful [nih]

It’s great if you’re ready to quit - doesn’t automatically get you to that point, though.
posted by atoxyl at 11:27 AM on August 6 [1 favorite]

When I worked in China I had a discussion wherein it was pointed out that the West had forgotten about the opium wars, but China had not. At the time you could order hundreds of kilos of precursors and very official looking paperwork and export them without issue.
posted by pdoege at 11:30 AM on August 6 [3 favorites]

as fucked up as it sounds - i think the only possible solution at this point is to decriminalize opioid possession and offer addicts a prescription (the incredibly dark irony is not lost on me) that allows them to get opioids accurate dosages that allows them to use safely and requires them to interact with professionals who can offer them assitance and services should they ever decide to attempt to get clean or just to exist with some safety and dignity. The Sacklers and their ilk should have all their property expropriated and be thrown in prison for the rest of their lives (if not being put up against the wall) This will almost definitely never happen in the united states and tens of thousands of people will continue to die while psycho puritanical freaks of newspaper comment sections and elected office continue to demand that these people be thrown in jail or die in the streets and the millionaire and billionaire drug dealers live their lives totally unaffected.
posted by youthenrage at 12:48 PM on August 6 [5 favorites]

They tried this in Vancouver Canada and having driven through east hastings just this weekend I can tell you it is not working and in fact they are back pedaling to now re-criminalize.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:53 PM on August 6 [1 favorite]

They tried it in a way that impacts a very small percentage of their population of drug users (which can be read as a criticism of the feasibility of the policy but it’s also unlikely that it’s a major contributor to the problem).
posted by atoxyl at 1:18 PM on August 6 [2 favorites]

As one who has an undergraduate degree in chemistry and works with fentanyl on a daily basis (personally gave 25 μgm to a 6 year old this morning) this was both fascinating and terrifying. The terrifying part is the cavalier attitude these chemists have toward substitutions on the basic drug molecule, as well as haphazard lab practices in general. Contaminants in carelessly made street opioids have had disastrous results in the past. And even scarier to me is the unknown effects this tinkering on the fentanyl molecule has on potency. The article mentions carfentanil, and stories have circulated over the years of other derivatives that are orders of magnitude more potent still and have been researched for military use as chemical warfare agents. It was almost certainly fentanyl or one of the more potent derivatives that was used by Russian troops during the hostage crisis in a Moscow theater in 2002. Scary to think of this stuff on the streets.
posted by TedW at 1:21 PM on August 6 [4 favorites]

BC decriminalization has

• only been going for a year and a half
• decriminalized simple possession while still leaving sale, production, and importation illegal (export too but not relevant)

. It's the kind of half assed result of policy watered down to get past law and order gatekeepers that is setup for failure.

Besides which it was a policy enacted with a goal of harm reduction. Making a drive by of an area with visible drug users isn't going to tell anyone anything about the number of deaths, hospitalizations or people who have managed to kick their habits. It won't say anything about lack of arrests that would otherwise waste police and justice resources. In fact less people dying might mean more visible drug users.

And if I understand correctly the only back pedal is public use. Which in a regime that allows public consumption of alcohol seems like hypocritical pearl clutching but here we are.
posted by Mitheral at 2:04 PM on August 6 [9 favorites]

It’s a good idea to distinguish decriminalization from legalization and safe supply in discussing these issues, since they are distinct things. BC does have the latter but as I said earlier it’s my understanding that it doesn’t reach a very large percentage of drug users. There have been studies published with opposing claims about the effects of that policy but I suspect any effect at a population level will largely be drowned out by other factors.

more visible drug users

A lot of backlash to these policies is definitely about this, yes.
posted by atoxyl at 2:13 PM on August 6 [4 favorites]

It was almost certainly fentanyl or one of the more potent derivatives that was used by Russian troops during the hostage crisis in a Moscow theater in 2002.

Wikipedia says a mixture of carfentanil and remifentanil, based on an analysis of residue on the clothing of surviving hostages, though I guess there’s still some controversy about it and whether other anesthetic agents were involved.

If I’m not mistaken part of the reason anybody thought this was a viable incapacitating agent is that the therapeutic index of some of the ultrapotent fentanyls is actually higher, in theory, than that of “ordinary” opioids? But they are so potent in absolute terms that this doesn’t necessarily save you in practice.
posted by atoxyl at 2:21 PM on August 6 [3 favorites]

One of the things you have to understand about decriminalization, even decriminalization coupled with the generous social support that is needed, is that people who have been fucked up for twenty years are not going to suddenly get off the streets or stop looking miserable in public. They're going to stop going to jail for possession, with all the violence and waste of resources that entails. If they are offered prescription support, they will be less likely to commit various property crimes to support their habit. If they are offered health care, including evidence-based rehab, they are more likely to take it up, at least at some point. If they are offered supportive housing, that may help you see less of them in acute misery on the streets. But decriminalization won't make the fucked-up people just evaporate. They're still fucked up. We still run a society that produces some pretty fucked-up people as a byproduct of capitalism and patriarchy and other broken systems, and is generally comfortable with that. Decriminalization is about not compounding the damage already done, and, hopefully, improving the chances of ameliorating some of it.

Making a drive-by vibes-based assessment of the effects of drug policy is, to be blunt, pretty contemptible.
posted by praemunire at 2:34 PM on August 6 [16 favorites]

Ok, now do misoprostol.
posted by novalis_dt at 3:18 PM on August 6 [2 favorites]

I'm curious, how does street-level, debilitating use compare with use by the rest of the country? Could it be just a small portion of a bigger problem happening?
posted by rebent at 8:37 PM on August 6

people who have been fucked up for twenty years are not going to suddenly get off the streets or stop looking miserable in public.

Honest question: what do you mean when you say “the generous social support that is needed”? Because I think that with truly generous robust social support, it is possible to fix even twenty-year substance abuse issues and more, but I’m envisioning more than just “get them a therapist and housing”.

Like, I think that most people in this condition need at least, as a start, a month long stay in a fully supportive and therapeutic rehabilitation facility that specializes in addressing the root cause of the issues. Full medical detox and full medical care, followed by social workers and wraparound therapy 2-3x a week post discharge. But they’re *really* expensive - the price one such facility charges the VA to house the veterans we send them is 60K a month. It works, though - I’ve seen it turn people’s entire lives around.
posted by corb at 9:28 AM on August 7 [3 favorites]

I realize the question was to praemunire, but on corb's I’m envisioning more than just “get them a therapist and housing”...

A local social services administrator described a client who, now, has housing. But childhood trauma around things that happened in a house is such that said client still sleeps rough, and goes to the housing in the morning to shower and eat.

I think it's also important to ponder that often the "twenty-year substance abuse issues" are a trauma response, and not the inciting trauma. There may be more trauma from 20 years of living on edges of society, sure, but we need to be thinking in terms of "generous social support" in those terms.

And, yes, the social support needs to mitigate that underlying trauma. And, yes, we really don't know how to fix that underlying trauma. But when I talk about "generous social support", yeah, I'm thinking more than just housing and access to medical care. Those are minimums.
posted by straw at 12:27 PM on August 7 [6 favorites]

a month long stay in a fully supportive and therapeutic rehabilitation facility that specializes in addressing the root cause of the issues.

A month-long stay probably isn't going to do it for many, unfortunately. For some people, it can take years to recover from addiction. Mental health issues can be chronic. And so forth. Therapy, rehab, housing, some form of minimum income, prescriptions for their substances (if we're in that world), opportunity to work on expunging criminal records, educational opportunities, spiritual support for those who wish it...these would all help a lot, but for many of the people shooting up in doorways at Mass & Cass in Boston it would be a long time before they'd be in stable recovery, even with a lot of expensive assistance. With that aside I was really more criticizing the policy in some areas to decriminalize without providing the social support, which isn't going to do very much.
posted by praemunire at 6:08 PM on August 8 [2 favorites]

The reality is no government is prepared or willing to fund the level of care needed at the scale it’s needed. They barely want to fund schools, hospitals, or long-term care. In Canada at least, those systems were set up when corporate tax rates were closer to 40% than 15%. Income taxes are as high as anyone would support given flat wages and high COL. Pretending to do something is what we can afford (in terms of $ and public will).
posted by cotton dress sock at 4:38 PM on August 14 [3 favorites]

(Even Portugal is scaling back services because they’re broke. Neoliberalism at work.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 8:28 AM on August 15