0:02

Hello, this is PJ Vogt, and

0:04

I'm here to tell you about my new podcast. It's called

0:07

Search Engine. Every week, Search

0:09

Engine tries to answer a question we have about the world.

0:12

And not just any question. Questions so

0:14

strange and contagious that once

0:16

you hear them, you will want to ask

0:18

them to everybody you see. We

0:20

also take requests. If you've ever wished

0:23

you could send a hyper-obsessive, hyper-curious

0:25

team of reporters at some question that kept you up

0:27

at night, Search Engine is here for you.

0:30

On Search Engine, this year, we've answered questions

0:32

like,

0:32

why can't we turn all the empty

0:38

offices into apartment buildings? How

0:40

sad are the monkeys at the zoo? What

0:42

are the best three theories for why Elon Musk

0:45

has gone so far off the rails? No

0:48

matter the topic, I promise you these stories

0:50

will make you laugh and feel wonder.

0:53

The episode we're sharing with you today is one of the more

0:55

investigative stories. It's about this

0:57

question I've had for a long time. Maybe you've had it too.

1:00

The question,

1:01

why are drug dealers poisoning their

1:03

own customers by sneaking fentanyl into

1:06

other drugs? We'll get into it after

1:08

these ads.

1:24

Welcome to Search Engine.

1:38

I'm PJ Vogt. There have been all

1:40

these stories about people dying from fentanyl-laced

1:42

drugs. I read these stories in the news. I

1:45

just hear them in my community. Fentanyl-laced

1:47

cocaine, Xanax, synthetic weed.

1:50

I recently read about fentanyl showing up in store-bought

1:53

weed gummies outside Philadelphia, although the

1:55

tests there seem a bit inconclusive.

1:57

But the question I've always had seemed kind of like a simple

1:59

one. maybe bordering on naive. Why

2:02

would a drug dealer do this? Like, why would

2:04

you sneak a very lethal drug into drugs

2:06

that are much less lethal or in some cases

2:09

not lethal at all? I

2:12

want to say I am a sophisticated enough

2:14

adult to understand that drug dealers are

2:16

not like the most well-regulated

2:18

or universally altruistic class of businessperson.

2:22

But still, even an illegal business

2:24

is a business. What kind

2:26

of business survives while killing its own customers?

2:29

It didn't even seem to make sense in ruthless capitalism

2:32

logic. We got an answer,

2:34

which we're going to share with you, but we're going to tell

2:36

you the story a little bit differently than how we normally

2:38

would. We're going to tell you the answer

2:40

from two perspectives. Episode

2:43

one, the undercover reporter. We'll

2:46

speak with a journalist who's covered this for years, who'll

2:48

explain how fentanyl became a street drug in the

2:50

first place. And then episode

2:52

two, the dealer. We'll

2:55

talk to a person who's used fentanyl, who sold it to

2:57

others, and who will explain how the strange

2:59

logic that drives his world has now infiltrated

3:02

ours.

3:15

In the

3:15

north of Belgium,

3:18

the Belgian doctor who invented

3:21

fentanyl had a reputation that almost could not

3:23

be further from his terrifying drug. Paul

3:25

Janssen, widely considered to be one of

3:28

the most important pharmaceutical researchers

3:30

of all time. Janssen died

3:32

in 2003, but this is him being interviewed

3:34

on what is basically Belgian PBS towards

3:36

the end of his life, talking about his long

3:39

career. He was really

3:42

a genius. He invented like over 100 medicines.

3:44

I saw his writer Ben Westhoff,

3:52

author of Fentanyl Inc. about Janssen's legacy.

3:55

He told me that Janssen actually invented fentanyl a long

3:57

time ago, back in 1959.

3:59

trying to find something that was better

4:02

for hospital procedures

4:04

like open-heart surgery. What

4:06

made fentanyl superior to morphine

4:09

is that it comes on faster

4:12

and it goes away faster. So

4:15

people who are say in open-heart

4:17

surgery don't have to be there for

4:19

as long.

4:21

It doesn't cause nausea

4:24

and

4:25

it's basically kind of the perfect hospital

4:28

drug. This is like it feels like I'm

4:30

like asking a question about a musician or something

4:32

but like does he have any other like hits that I

4:34

would have heard of? Yeah just like

4:36

a diarrhea medicine I think. Emodium?

4:38

A huge fan of Emodium.

4:42

Yeah Emodium that's him. Wow

4:45

yeah Emodium has done some good work with

4:47

me. I feel

4:49

more grateful to him by the minute.

4:51

Paul Jansen the man who invented the

4:53

drug that according to some studies kills

4:56

more American adults under the age

4:58

of 45 than guns, COVID

5:01

or cancer. In his lifetime

5:03

he was regarded as kind of a medical saint

5:06

and for decades it looked like fentanyl would just be another

5:08

feather in his already pretty feathery cap.

5:13

Ben says Jansen never dreamed that his drug

5:15

would play a role in taking so many lives. We

5:18

couldn't imagine it but then again neither

5:20

could the US government.

5:22

What's really strange is that nobody

5:24

saw this coming at all. In fact

5:26

I found this DEA report from 2015

5:30

that said basically when it came to fentanyl

5:33

you know there's nothing to see here.

5:35

In 2015? Yeah as

5:37

recently as 2015 they

5:39

said that it was so potent that

5:41

users just didn't want it, the risk of death

5:44

was too high that we didn't have to

5:46

worry about it and it was only one

5:48

year later that fentanyl

5:51

was killing more people than any other

5:53

drug in the US.

5:56

The DEA missed fentanyl. They

5:58

did not see it coming. According to

6:00

their estimates, only 700 people

6:02

died from fentanyl overdose in 2014. But

6:05

very soon after, the problem would be clear. In 2016,

6:09

according to the NIH, almost 20,000 people

6:13

would die from synthetic opioid overdoses.

6:15

Most of that fentanyl.

6:18

What happened?

6:20

At the time, it was a mystery. But

6:23

one thing that the DEA may have missed

6:26

in 2015 was that while yes, fentanyl was

6:28

a terrible drug for consumers, deadly

6:30

with a short acting high, it was

6:32

an incredibly attractive drug for dealers

6:35

because it was just so cheap to make.

6:37

Fentanyl is much cheaper than heroin because

6:40

it's synthetic. It's made in a lab. So

6:43

heroin, of course, comes from the opium poppy.

6:46

And to grow poppies, you need a lot of land,

6:49

time, and it's much more expensive

6:52

and it's much more subject

6:55

to law enforcement discovering it.

6:57

Whereas with fentanyl, you can just make it in some clandestine

7:00

lab. So it's much

7:02

cheaper to make and at the same time, it's much

7:05

more potent. And so it's

7:07

just incredibly profitable.

7:10

Most products succeed because

7:12

there's a big consumer demand for them. Not

7:15

because there's a big producer supply of them.

7:18

But you can flip that logic if the product

7:20

you have a big supply of happens to be incredibly

7:23

addictive.

7:26

For the people supplying fentanyl, the drug had

7:28

another advantage besides just being cheap. It

7:31

was that much of the supply was being produced

7:33

in a country where it was actually sort of quasi-legal.

7:36

China. China was

7:38

the principal supplier of fentanyl to the United

7:40

States starting in 2013. Not

7:43

long after the Chinese government officially

7:45

banned fentanyl, they were slow to ban

7:47

analogues of the drug. Basically slight

7:50

tweaks to the recipe that added a

7:52

molecule here or there, but left the basic

7:55

chemical structure of fentanyl intact.

7:57

when

8:01

these chemists would create a new type of fentanyl,

8:03

a new fentanyl analog, and

8:05

then the government would ban it. And

8:08

so they'd stop making that, and then

8:10

they'd tweak the chemical a little bit more

8:12

to have a new legal variation.

8:15

And so the result is a bunch

8:17

of gray market chemicals

8:20

that are legal in China, but

8:22

illegal in the US.

8:25

In 2018, Ben gets curious

8:27

about those Chinese labs, and he decides

8:29

he wants to try to visit one, which

8:33

begs the question, how does an American

8:35

living in St. Louis find his way

8:37

into a Chinese fentanyl lab?

8:41

Obviously, he begins to search on one of the darkest,

8:43

least understood parts of the internet.

8:46

This guy actually had a LinkedIn profile.

8:49

The fentanyl dealer had a LinkedIn profile?

8:51

Yeah, you know, he didn't advertise

8:53

fentanyl on his page. He offered

8:56

all these other chemicals, and

8:58

he did these kind of custom synthesis

9:01

for whatever you wanted. And

9:03

so I asked if he sold

9:05

these different fentanyl analogs, and he

9:08

did. And so I met him at this

9:10

train station in Shanghai, and

9:12

he spent like most of the

9:14

day vetting me. He actually asked

9:17

me point blank if I was a journalist.

9:20

What was your story? Somebody

9:22

asked you three times if you were a journalist, you have to tell the truth. Yeah,

9:27

I mean, I was trying to think, what's a drug dealer name? And

9:29

so for some reason, I came up with Johnny

9:31

Webster was my name, and

9:34

I said I was from New York, which is

9:37

also a lie. And basically,

9:40

to not get too far over my head, what

9:43

I said was that I wasn't actually the drug

9:45

dealer, but my friend was, and

9:47

I just happened to be in China, and

9:50

my drug dealing friend asked me if I

9:52

could visit this lab to do

9:54

some reconnaissance for him. And

9:56

if this lab lived up to our quality

9:59

standards. Then he would make

10:01

a big buy from them.

10:03

And that was enough to get you a meeting? Yeah,

10:06

I mean, we met at this train station and then

10:08

he said, well, we're gonna go to my

10:11

office. What state

10:13

of USA did you come from? New

10:16

York. New York.

10:17

New York. New York is very... Ben secretly

10:20

recorded his meeting with the guy who ran the

10:22

lab. And his office was actually his apartment

10:25

where he lived with his family. His wife and

10:27

daughter were out, but it was

10:29

in the penthouse of this really nice

10:31

high rise in a gated community.

10:34

It's my home. I really like my home. Oh,

10:36

it's your home, okay. Very nice. The

10:39

lab is about 30 miles away from

10:41

here. In New Town, Corby's.

10:44

He said 30 miles. And

10:47

he talked and he showed me the

10:49

list of chemicals and the prices and

10:52

then he still wasn't sure about me. So he took me out

10:54

to lunch. Where'd you guys go? Well,

10:57

he asked if I wanted to go to McDonald's. I

10:59

asked my driver to take

11:01

her to the McDonald's. Oh,

11:04

okay. Because you're an American.

11:06

He's like an American. He must love McDonald's,

11:08

but I said, well... Oh, no, I do. I like

11:11

China's food. You like Chinese food? Yeah, I like Chinese

11:13

food, yes. Very good. But McDonald's

11:15

is okay. It's your choice. They

11:18

do end up going to a local Chinese restaurant.

11:21

In China, these establishments are called restaurants.

11:25

Which was very good. And

11:27

we just sort of shot the shit

11:29

and somewhere along the way, he decided I passed

11:31

muster. And so he called his

11:34

driver who came and picked me

11:36

up. This guy didn't speak any English to the driver

11:38

and he was kind of muscle bound. He looked like he might

11:40

be the guy who would break my kneecaps

11:43

if they found out I was lying or something. But

11:46

finally, we were in kind of like the deep

11:48

exurbs, I guess you would call them. And

11:51

we arrived to this really bland,

11:54

generic looking business park, a

11:57

new construction building. And we went inside,

11:59

you know, it could have been anything.

11:59

in there. What it reminded me most of was just

12:02

like a high school chemistry lab. It

12:04

was not like super sort

12:06

of fancy sophisticated, but you

12:08

know, it wasn't like

12:10

underground either. It was all totally functional.

12:13

And like, did it feel like being in a place

12:15

that felt dangerous and illicit, or did it feel

12:17

like being at somebody's job?

12:19

I would say a little bit of

12:21

both. Like, it was the

12:23

middle of winter and it was really cold,

12:26

but all the windows were open and the

12:28

smell was really strong. You know, it didn't

12:31

seem quite professional

12:33

in that way. I had to like, I mean, even he, the

12:35

chemist, his name is Dawson Lee, he pulled

12:38

his shirt up over his nose.

12:41

What Ben means is that the chemist was using his t-shirt

12:43

as protection instead of a mask or respirator.

12:45

You know,

12:46

and I was like, Oh, that doesn't quite

12:48

seem right. You know, and it became really clear

12:50

that I didn't

12:55

know what I was talking about. And I think

12:57

they just, you know, they talked

13:00

it up to, I would give my

13:02

friend the report of this place. And

13:04

then I would get back with them and give

13:06

them my real order.

13:08

Ben obviously did not place a real order,

13:11

which didn't seem to bother the chemist. Ben

13:13

says the chemist still sends him cake emojis on

13:16

Skype on his birthday. During

13:18

Ben's trying to visit, he ended up visiting several

13:20

fentanyl producers. Each

13:22

time he found companies that seemed to toe the line

13:24

between legitimate business and underground drug

13:27

operation. They filled other chemicals,

13:29

not just fentanyl, and they wouldn't announce they

13:31

were selling pencil on their website. But in

13:34

conversation, they were happy to make a deal. Ben

13:37

thinks that part of the reason he was welcomed with such

13:39

open arms was because it wasn't so unusual

13:41

for Americans to show up doing what he was pretending

13:44

to do, showing up to buy fentanyl

13:46

from Chinese labs. Although the more typical

13:49

route for fentanyl is to go from China to the

13:51

Mexican drug cartels, who then smuggle

13:53

it into the States.

13:55

So mostly what you have coming across

13:57

the border are these cartel

13:59

affiliates. who are bringing fentanyl,

14:02

heroin, cocaine and meth. More

14:04

deadly fentanyl has been seized at

14:07

our border than ever before. Often

14:10

in secret compartments and vehicles.

14:12

Agents found the drugs hidden in the gas tank

14:14

and a spare tire.

14:15

Trucks that are bringing other

14:17

products. A 26-year-old man attempted

14:20

to smuggle the drugs into the U.S.

14:22

with a produce tractor-trailer.

14:24

The driver, of course, arrived. Some is taken across

14:27

by drones. There's underground

14:29

tunnels. You know, I've

14:31

heard about people taking the drugs on surfboards,

14:34

like around the wall in San

14:36

Diego. Wait, they surf around

14:39

the border wall? Yeah, I was actually

14:42

there right at the coast

14:44

where the border wall

14:45

ends. And it really doesn't

14:47

go out into the water very far

14:49

at all. It's like you can swim around

14:52

it really easily. This

14:55

pipeline was reaching an American market full

14:57

of consumers who had not initially wanted fentanyl,

15:00

but would ultimately end up demanding large

15:02

amounts of it. And that demand

15:04

would be there not because it had been stoked

15:06

by Mexican drug cartels. Those

15:09

addicted users had been created by someone else.

15:14

After the break, the dealers, the

15:17

Sacklers, and a 5,000-year-old problem.

15:49

Welcome back to the show.

15:52

There's this part of the story of the opioid

15:54

epidemic that I feel like gets lost sometimes,

15:56

that I'm always trying to explain and can never quite

15:58

articulate. I want to try one more

16:01

time now. So

16:03

fentanyl, OxyContin, heroin,

16:05

morphine, opium. These drugs are all

16:07

very similar. They're chemical cousins. If

16:10

it's found in nature, it's called an opiate. If

16:12

it's made in the lab, an opioid. We

16:15

can call some of these drugs new, but

16:17

human beings have been getting high off of opiates

16:19

for over 5,000 years. Since

16:22

antiquity, we've known that if you dry

16:24

the latex of poppy seeds, the same seeds you

16:27

find on your bagel, there's a resin produced

16:29

which can take away pain and induce euphoria.

16:32

And we've known that those highs can lead to tolerance,

16:35

to addiction, to death. Cleopatra

16:38

is rumored to have killed herself with a drug cocktail

16:40

containing opium. The Romans

16:42

used it in poisons, so did the ancient Greeks. Obiates

16:46

relax you. You die because your body forgets

16:48

to regulate its breathing. Dying

16:51

because you're in such euphoria, your body

16:53

stops seeking oxygen, is how Socrates

16:56

may have left this earth, and it's

16:58

how 80,000 Americans died last year. Drugs

17:02

stay the same. Their effects are pretty consistent. What

17:05

changes is the stories we tell around them.

17:08

Stories about their usefulness, stories about their danger.

17:11

We can forget that these stories are in flux, are

17:13

being contested, but they are. Morphine

17:17

was discovered in 1803, but

17:19

it was replaced for a while by a better

17:21

hospital painkiller from Bayer Pharmaceutical.

17:24

Heroin.

17:28

First synthesized in 1874, heroin

17:31

was considered a good painkiller in the US, before

17:33

it was seen as an addictive street drug. In

17:36

the UK, a doctor might still prescribe heroin,

17:38

controlled, monitored, to a kid with

17:40

a broken bone. What

17:45

I'm trying to say is that when we decide if a drug

17:47

is dangerous or not, it's not just about

17:49

the drug's inherent properties, it's

17:51

about whether our culture is telling the right story

17:53

about it. Have we attached the proper

17:56

warning label to this thing? What

17:59

is so striking? to me about our opioid

18:01

epidemic that so many of us are dying from,

18:03

is that we're dying not because

18:05

we invented something new and dangerous, but

18:07

because we forgot or convinced ourselves

18:10

or were convinced that something old

18:12

and dangerous was actually new and safe.

18:17

Oxycontin, the painkiller that started

18:19

the opioid crisis, was really just

18:21

a stronger version of oxycodone, which has

18:23

been around since 1916. But what was really new about

18:27

oxycodone was the story it was wrapped in. This

18:30

is a part of all this I think most people are familiar with.

18:32

My favorite book about it is Patrick Ragan Keefe's

18:35

Empire of Pain. It's about not

18:37

just the introduction of oxycodone, but really

18:39

how one family, the Sacklers, made

18:42

billions of dollars by rewriting the

18:44

story of the poppy seed. Patrick

18:47

Ragan Keefe tells the story of the Sacklers, owners

18:50

of the privately held company Purdue Pharma. Purdue

18:52

formulated oxycodone. Crucially,

18:55

according to Purdue, oxycodone was

18:58

not addictive. This is

19:00

a big deal because opioids have traditionally

19:02

been some of the most addictive drugs mankind

19:04

has synthesized. To say that

19:07

a new opioid painkiller could be both

19:09

more powerful and less addictive than what proceeded

19:11

it, it's a huge deal. Purdue

19:14

claims the key to all this was a time release

19:17

coating on the pill, a time release coating

19:19

that made it so that it could not be abused. Once

19:22

you've found the right doctor and have told

19:24

him or her about your pain, don't

19:27

be afraid to take what they give you. Often

19:30

it will be an opioid medication. This

19:32

is a clip from a 1998 Purdue marketing

19:35

video. It was intended for doctors

19:37

to show their patients to assuage any fears

19:39

someone might have about taking on an oxy

19:41

prescription. Some patients may be afraid

19:44

of taking opioids because they're perceived

19:46

as too strong or addictive

19:49

but that is far from actual fact.

19:52

Less than 1% of patients

19:54

taking opioids actually become addicted.

20:00

We now think that addiction rates were 10 times

20:02

higher than what the doctor claimed, one

20:05

in 10 patients. As it turned

20:07

out, you could crush up the pills and snort

20:09

or inject them. The coding did very little.

20:13

As evidence mounted of this reality, Purdue

20:15

ignored it. Purdue executives continued

20:17

to aggressively market their drug, they fought court

20:20

challenges, they made billions of dollars

20:22

as tens of thousands, then hundreds

20:24

of thousands of Americans died from opioid

20:27

overdoses. Their story

20:29

of a drug called OxyContin that was supposed to be safe

20:32

helps explain the rise of fentanyl, a drug

20:34

we've always known was deadly. You'll

20:36

remember that reporter Ben Westhoff told us

20:38

how in 2015 fentanyl was not

20:40

really on the DEA's radar. They

20:43

estimated that the fentanyl overdose deaths that previous

20:45

year were at just 700 people nationwide.

20:48

The year after that, the US government

20:50

steps in to regulate OxyContin for the first time.

20:53

In 2016, the

20:55

CDC issued a directive that greatly reduced

20:57

the flow of OxyContin prescriptions. For

21:00

Americans who'd become addicted to a drug they

21:02

were told was not addictive, this is a problem.

21:05

They've been cut off. And many discovered

21:07

they become something they were told they'd never be.

21:10

Trig addicts. Here's reporter Ben

21:12

Westhoff.

21:14

All these people took these pills for

21:16

legitimate reasons, prescribed by their

21:18

doctor, became addicted, and

21:21

then when their prescriptions ran out, they sought

21:23

out illicit heroin

21:26

on the street. So this

21:29

happened so much that by one

21:31

study, I think, showed that it

21:33

created a million new

21:36

opioid users in America.

21:39

So suddenly there's this huge new market

21:42

and there's just not enough heroin to feed

21:44

it all. It's just like fentanyl

21:46

basically steps in to fill

21:48

this void.

21:50

Since 2016, Sentinel

21:52

has continued to fill the void. A

21:54

pipeline running into the United States without

21:56

much interruption.

21:58

So it goes...

21:59

goes to Mexico gets refined in Mexico

22:02

Mexican dealers ship it over the border to the

22:04

US what are the like the

22:06

dealers in the US like you have a sense of who they are

22:08

yeah

22:09

everything comes over the border

22:11

in places like San Diego you know

22:14

or El Paso Texas and

22:17

then it kind of like fans out so

22:19

with each rung of the distribution ladder

22:22

it gets a little further away from the cartels

22:25

so eventually it's distributed

22:27

by these different regional

22:29

gangs you know in California

22:32

there's like these MS-13

22:35

type gangs in st. Louis where I live

22:37

it's like African-American gangs

22:39

in West Virginia it's like white

22:43

you know family run organizations

22:47

it's all very regional here's

22:48

a question that I actually haven't seen answered

22:51

it's really basic what

22:54

is the fentanyl high like like what does it

22:56

feel like

22:57

I've never taken fentanyl but I've

22:59

heard that fentanyl is described

23:01

as like a less soulful high

23:04

than heroin I mean there's all

23:06

this sort of romanticizing of

23:08

heroin from like jazz players

23:10

in the 1960s and things

23:12

like that but one thing that

23:15

I know for sure is that fentanyl

23:18

what makes it such a great hospital drug

23:20

is that it doesn't last very long and

23:23

so this is great if you're operating on someone

23:25

but for an addictive user this is

23:27

really bad because it means that you

23:29

have to re-op so quickly and so

23:32

where one dose of heroin might last you

23:34

the better part of a day the fentanyl

23:37

high is gonna wear off in just a few hours

23:40

and so it leaves

23:42

you kind of scrambling to find more I actually

23:47

spend a decent amount of time lurking

23:49

on the subreddit for heroin in

23:51

case you haven't noticed I'm pretty curious about opioids

23:54

partly because I have friends who've overdosed and I have

23:56

questions I can't ask them but even

23:58

if I didn't miss those people I'd be curious

24:00

anyway. I'm interested

24:03

in the highs people pursue, and the addictions

24:05

that entangle them. More than anything

24:07

else, I'm interested in all the life

24:09

that happens in the places where people congregate

24:11

in shame. There's a lot of that part

24:14

of life bustling quietly on the heroin message

24:16

board on Reddit. Pictures

24:18

of people's heroin sashes, advice about

24:20

abscesses, and a lot of complaints

24:23

about fentanyl. Now,

24:26

this is a small sample of heroin users, about 70,000.

24:29

But the people here at least, do not

24:31

seem to mind OxyContin at all. It's a

24:34

good enough heroin replacement. They

24:36

do seem to universally despise fentanyl.

24:39

Here's one post of many. Quote, "'Well,

24:43

it's almost 1 a.m. the morning of payday "'for me finally,

24:45

and I just did my last line of "'fent until I get

24:47

off tomorrow. "'This shit is the worst.

24:50

"'I swear I'll be sick as fuck three hours from now "'before

24:52

I wake up. "'Gonna be a fun 10 and

24:54

a half hour day "'working construction lol. "'Hope

24:57

I can get some better stuff this week.' Shake my head.

25:00

Somebody else agrees. God, I

25:03

fucking hate fentanyl, they say. Quote, "'I'm

25:05

so pissed that it's taken over the opioid market

25:07

"'and made it so hard to get real heroin anymore.

25:11

"'I'm sure it'll soon be totally replaced, "'and the poppy

25:13

fields will fade away "'as fentanyl makes heroin less

25:15

and less profitable. "'I'm honestly very

25:17

upset by this.'" I've

25:20

seen people be nostalgic for a lot

25:22

of things on the internet, and mad about a lot of things.

25:25

This one was due to me. But

25:27

nostalgia for heroin is part of fentanyl's legacy,

25:30

and it makes sense that these heroin users hate it. Like

25:33

Ben Westoff has said, fentanyl offers

25:35

a shorter high, a greater addiction potential,

25:38

and a higher risk of overdose. To

25:40

return to 2016, when all these

25:42

heroin users couldn't find heroin because the

25:44

oxycontin-addicted newcomers had flooded the market,

25:48

their hatred of fentanyl was actually

25:50

a problem for drug dealers, but

25:52

they found a workaround. Their workaround

25:55

was that they just lied.

25:58

For the first years, at least, of the... Fentanyl

26:00

crisis, most people didn't realize they

26:02

were taking it. And so at least

26:05

east of the Mississippi all of the

26:07

heroin in the US is pretty

26:09

much white powder. And so Fentanyl

26:11

is a white powder also. So you could cut it

26:14

in there without people realizing.

26:16

And at first it was just very small amounts.

26:19

So maybe one part Fentanyl

26:21

to eight parts heroin or something like

26:23

that. And they got really

26:25

good feedback from their customers and you

26:28

know they were able to make a stronger product for

26:30

less money. And so they kept adding

26:33

more and more and more like two parts

26:35

for every aid and three parts for every aid, etc, etc.

26:38

And nowadays, that's the biggest problem

26:41

is that Fentanyl is being sold

26:43

as Fentanyl.

26:45

The drug dealers dirty trick totally

26:47

worked. Many heroin users have

26:49

all but given up on the idea of finding any non

26:51

fentanyl heroin today. And

26:53

in fact, many users read it notwithstanding

26:56

have just accepted Fentanyl as a fact of life. Some

26:59

even pursue it. Fentanyl

27:01

nowadays, even a death from a Fentanyl

27:03

overdose can actually be helpful for Fentanyl

27:06

dealers.

27:07

When users would hear about someone

27:09

dying overdosing

27:12

from a product that had a lot of Fentanyl,

27:15

you know, the sad truth is that a lot of them

27:17

weren't saying I need to avoid that batch.

27:20

A lot of them were saying I need to get some of that

27:22

batch, you know, people really think

27:24

it's not going to happen to them. So death

27:26

can be like a form of advertisement. I

27:29

mean, it's really sad to say but that is

27:31

I've talked to a lot of people who say exactly

27:33

that. Yeah.

27:35

Wow.

27:37

So that is a pretty dark answer

27:39

or part of an answer to the question that brought us

27:41

here. Why would drug dealers

27:43

adulterate their drugs with another drug that

27:45

could kill their customers? Because

27:47

those dealers have realized that actually it's

27:50

not bad for business. A combination

27:52

of overall opioid demand plus

27:54

some addicts fatal commitment to the highest

27:57

high means that poisoning some

27:59

customers actually works out for the dealer

28:01

in the long run. But that's

28:03

the opioid market. Remember, we wanted

28:05

to know about cocaine users, weed

28:07

users, people who are not seeking out the

28:10

kind of opioid high that fentanyl offers. Death,

28:13

presumably, is not an advertisement for them.

28:16

So why would any dealer put fentanyl in those

28:18

kinds of drugs? That, at

28:20

least, feels like bad business. One

28:23

of the things I find confusing about that is

28:26

that my

28:28

assumption is that a stimulant user, like

28:30

a cocaine user, would notice, hey,

28:32

this is a different high. Why is it

28:34

possible to cut it into drugs

28:37

that are supposed to have very different reactions?

28:40

The first thing I think is that cocaine

28:43

in America is so adulterated,

28:46

and it has been for so long, that Americans

28:49

have no idea what real cocaine

28:52

is actually like. I've heard from

28:54

people who've had a cure that

28:56

it's more ecstasy, actually. It gives

28:59

you this euphoric feeling

29:01

rather than this manic high,

29:04

and that it lasts a long time. And

29:07

the second thing is, I think that just people

29:10

aren't complaining. Users aren't really

29:12

in a position to complain, and as long

29:14

as they're getting high at all,

29:17

I think most people probably are

29:19

satisfied with their cocaine cut

29:21

with fentanyl.

29:24

So from Ben's perspective, as

29:26

a person who has studied the opioid market as an outsider, a

29:29

journalist, not a customer, not a dealer, this

29:32

phenomenon just made sense. Dealers

29:34

putting fentanyl in drugs like cocaine was not shocking to

29:37

him, given his understanding of how chaotically

29:40

illicit markets function.

29:42

In the beginning of this episode, I said I'd begun

29:44

with this assumption, which is that illicit

29:47

markets resemble normal ones. And I said the

29:49

reason I had this question about fentanyl poisoning

29:51

was because I didn't understand why any business

29:53

would want to kill its own customers. Ben's

29:57

view is that illicit markets are not real. normal.

30:01

American drugs are deeply adulterated. Fentanyl

30:03

is just the latest worst instance of that. It's

30:07

not surprising to Ben that in an unregulated

30:10

underground marketplace, the traffic to an extremely

30:12

addictive dangerous substances, of course

30:15

anything could happen. And sometimes it does. And

30:17

sometimes people die from it. All

30:21

of this is certainly correct. And

30:23

I actually spoke to a drug dealer, someone

30:25

who does not sell Fentanyl or other opioids.

30:28

And he basically echoed Ben. Although

30:30

this dealer described the Fentanyl dealer's motives

30:33

much less charitably, this dealer

30:35

said this Fentanyl dealer's behavior was not a

30:37

mystery. They were just desperate people

30:39

who are not that smart. He sort of

30:41

sounded almost like a Republican lawmaker. He

30:44

said the Fentanyl dealers were basically evil. They

30:46

were stupid. Of course they'd adulterate

30:48

a cheaper, less dangerous drug with Fentanyl.

30:51

Idiots do everything.

30:55

But for me, whatever itch I'd had that

30:57

made me want to answer this in the first place, the

31:00

itch still remained. It

31:03

bothered me to see this system as completely senseless,

31:05

as almost nihilist. People

31:08

do things for reasons, even if their reasons

31:10

are awful. I wanted someone from

31:12

within the world of Fentanyl to walk me through this.

31:15

To understand it, it's

31:17

probably going to take so much because none of it

31:20

makes sense. But to us it makes sense.

31:23

Next week, we meet a former drug dealer who

31:25

has sold Fentanyl, who has used Fentanyl, who

31:28

gives us an answer to our question, and

31:30

paints a picture of how bad things

31:32

have actually gotten in the listed market. He'll

31:35

talk about how he's become so suspicious. He

31:37

doesn't even trust the guy at the corner of Bodega anymore.

31:40

I won't even buy a loose liquid in the store today. Really?

31:43

No, I won't. I rather

31:45

not smoke or I'll get a smoke

31:48

from a friend. I cannot buy a loose cigarette.

31:50

Because you're wearing these loose cigarettes like a

31:52

Bodega guy with a liquid. Why not?

31:54

Why not?

31:56

It's just another hustle. If

32:04

you want to hear Lewis' story and the final

32:06

answer to our question, go to Search Engine

32:09

with PJ Vogt. The episode is titled,

32:12

Why Are Drug Dealers Putting Fentanyl in Everything?

32:15

Part 2. It's available

32:17

now. Or if you want to start from the very beginning of Search

32:19

Engine, you could begin with our pilot, which

32:22

is also one of our favorite episodes. It's a real

32:24

roller coaster, but very different from this one. He's

32:27

called, Wait, Should I Not Be Drinking

32:29

Airplane Coffee? The answer

32:32

is disgusting and surprising. Thank

32:34

you for listening, and we hope to see

32:36

you on the other side.