Production of the dangerous drug that killed Prince is soaring and the DEA can't keep up
This is fentanyl. It looks like any other prescription painkiller — but it isn't.
Fentanyl, which is also available in a patch or liquid, is 80 to 100 times more powerful than morphine and about 40 to 50 times more potent than 100% pure heroin.
Still, the drug belongs to a larger class of drugs, known as opioid painkillers, which includes prescription drugs like OxyContin and Vicodin. These drugs work by capitalizing on our body's natural pain-relief system, and can result in a surging sense of euphoria.
Since 1999, overdose deaths involving opioid painkillers have quadrupled. In 2014 alone, more than 14,000 people died from overdoses involving the drugs.
But fentanyl is the most potent of these painkillers — and it's available on the street. The photo below shows a bag of fentanyl pills disguised as hydrocodone tablets and recovered by authorities during a fentanyl investigation in northern California:
Aside from being available with a prescription, fentanyl is making its way to America and Canada by way of China and Mexico, where it's either produced illegally in underground labs or mixed into heroin produced by traffickers.
Sources: Fusion, "Death by Fentanyl", 2016; The Globe and Mail, "How Canada got addicted to fentanyl," 2016
In Mexico, the version of the drug mixed into heroin is called "El Diablito," or the little devil. “There’s almost nobody making pure heroin anymore, because el diablito is so much stronger,” one trafficker told Fusion.
Source: Fusion, "Death by Fentanyl", 2016
That trafficker said he got the precursor chemicals from China and paid a Colombian chemist $50,000 to show him how to make fentanyl.
Source: Fusion, "Death by Fentanyl", 2016
The drugmakers change up the specific ingredients in the drugs so fast — and produce them in such massive quantities — that drug enforcement can't keep up.
Source: STAT News, "Chinese labs modify deadly fentanyl to circumvent ban on sales to US," 2016
The drugs are created in powdered form in giant underground laboratories like this one, where the drug K2 or spice is being manufactured.
Source: VICE, "Synthetic Drug Revolution," 2015
Here's a small bag of the drug in powder form being poured onto a piece of paper.
Source: Fusion, "Death by Fentanyl", 2016
Then, it's packed up and smuggled into the US.
But it's not just the drugs themselves that are being snuck into the United States. In Southern California, authorities recently seized packages sent to mail centers and labeled as office supplies. One box contained a quarter-ton pill press, which can be used to hide the drug in pills resembling other painkillers. It was labeled “Hole Puncher."
Source: STAT News, "Chinese labs modify deadly fentanyl to circumvent ban on sales to US," 2016
These connections are making it possible for American drug dealers to produce large quantities of the drug in pills that can resemble prescription painkillers like hydrocodone.
But fentanyl is deadly, especially when obtained on the street where there's no way to know exactly what's in it. As an opioid painkiller, the drug slows down breathing and the functions of the central nervous system. “It is so potent and so deadly that even a microgram amount can kill someone,” DEA spokesman Rusty Payne told The Guardian.
Source: The Guardian, "What is fentanyl?" 2016
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