Opioids Where is the fentanyl COMING from? And why is there so much of it?

[Querencia]

Dear Bluelighters,

I'm a journalist who usually works with First Nations communities in Canada. I've also been a street-outreach worker with homeless folks in Montreal for nearly seven years. Plus I've got a long relationship with harm reduction ideas and I've helped friends in Ottawa campaign for the Safer Consumption Sites there (like Insite in Vancouver, but also with clean crack pipes to spread bloodborne illness through cracked lips and sores).

Even the mainstream media has been reporting on the flood of fentanyl now for a while. Because of my outreach work I know enough users on the street to know that I haven't yet met a single person who's HAPPY to buy fentanyl, especially when they're expecting oxy, dilaudid, or heroin. I'm not an opiate user and never have been but I've been told multiple times that the fentanyl high is terrible, nothing like the buzz you get from a decent pill or a bag of dope, plus if you dose wrong it kills you. We had a string of ODs two junes ago, including nine dead in that month, and I suspect some of the people I haven't seen at the outreach since then probably fell to the fucking stuff.

So here's my question: I presume no one WANTS to buy fentanyl when they buy a pill or bag (you can correct me if I'm wrong, as I may well be). That makes me presume that people producing the drugs have a bunch of fentanyl they have easy access to. What I want to know is: where are they getting it? Why is there so much of it?

I have a theory, so bear with me. A couple of years back the New Yorker ran a pretty solid article called "Prescription for Disaster" about a number of issues related to prescription drug use and addiction, but also the issue of chronic pain ad the importance of opiates in treating it. I happen to be married to someone with chronic pain and for her, an opiate is the only thing that stands between a day of misery and a day where she can get a few things done, yet often she's treated like a crook just for trying to fill her prescription. This hysteria the mainstream media has been whipping up about prescription addiction is hitting people who live in pain where they don't need to be hit--but I guess that's another story.

The thing is that it's TRUE that at this point the only high-power analgesia we have is opiate variants, and the pharma companies know this. They were pushing HARD for a long to convince doctors of shit that wasn't true--that you could have eight fentanyl lollipops in your mouth at once and you'd be healthy as a bull. They clearly moved to get a lot of the stuff onto the marketplace with very little care for its consequences--not only the many people who died on the patches, but the effect it would have on recreational users.

My theory is this: there's a lot of fentanyl out there because that's what's available. It's available because the pharma corps pushed it, and people who are on the dealing end of things got access to that somehow. I'm not really interested in how-- I'm not a fan of the drug war and I don't want to spend time smack-talking drug suppliers when I could be looking for even greater villains like pharmaceutical corporations telling doctors to risk their patients' lives.

I'd like to know a couple of things:

1. Does anyone here know about this end of the drug process? And if you do-- am I close to anything here? If not, can you correct me?
2. Do you know anyone who'd be willing to talk anonymously about the rise of fentanyl as a street drug? I've heard it was behind China White in the '90s as well, but I don't know. It's not like mining--people don't just hit a seam of fentanyl and suddenly have more than they know what to do with. It has to come from somewhere.
3. Do you have any ideas from the perspective of people who know and love drug users what folks can do as a community to get a better standard of dope and not have to risk their lives with this shit? In Montreal where i live, we had the very promising NAOMI project that gave free medical-quality heroin to users for a few years and showed amazing results, because Bush and his buddy Stephen Harper shut it down for treating drug users as human. Obviously that's an ideal, but between where we are and that, what can we do about the fentanyl problem--more than just cops warning people not to do drugs?

I'm willing to communicate with you privately and I can provide lots of identifying information about myself, send you to things I've written, and talk to you on Skype if you want to see that I'm a real person whose name matches my idea. Not going to give that stuff out here. You don't have to give me ANY incriinating information. I'm just tired of the scaremongering media freaking out and calling for more prohibition--I want to get the deeper story, find out where this stuff is coming from, and try to place the focus on that instead of drug users, addicts poorly served by virtually no recovery infrastructure, and people with chronic pain being treated with constant suspicion and contempt.

If you can help, please let me know!

Thanks!

 

[Bliss26]

Hi.
It's refreshing to hear from someone from the other side who's coming from a place of compassion and just earnestly wants to get facts on fent spread to make streets safer.
I'm sorry about your wife; I'm a CPP as well so I know how maddening it is to be in pain all the time, and how guilty I feel that my hub has to pick up so much of the slack. She's lucky to have an understanding spouse.
I'm going to start by saying I have no info from up on the drug chain, so I couldn't provide you with solid info on where the fent is coming from. I just thought maybe I could share a few thoughts...

1. Drug high ups are resourceful. They have networks, and friends in high places. I don't think it's uncommon for there to be sources in manufacturing, law enforcement, hospitals, etc. There's a dishonest guy in every bunch and always someone willing to give stuff or look the other way for the almighty dollar.

2. There are such things as fentanyl analogues, which are easy to get, act like fentanyl, and is a reasonably likely place for them to get massive quantity without raising eyebrows.

3. Because the drug guys are so resourceful, it makes sense to them to go the fent route. Because fent is so much stronger than H, oxy, etc, you can transport far more in the same volume . Not only that, but they wouldn't have to rely on afghani or Mexican cartels and the problem of getting stuff to North America. Fent would be readily available here.

4. I've never had fentanyl, but I too have never heard of anyone who actually prefers it to H. Most say it's not euphoric, just sedating, and has no legs, which means it doesn't last long.

5. Drug guys don't want to kill customers. It's bad for business. But when you get some dude in god knows where, USA mixing this in his basement, who doesn't understand conversion rates, how purity skews that, could be bad at math, and use bad equipment that almost guarantees uneven mixing of fent with fillers, there's a big quality control problem.

6. I don't think potentially clamping down on fent sources would have a discernible impact on anything.
I think it would be more helpful to finish shutting down the war on drugs, we have 2 liberal leaders who would be more willing to see the profound effect decriminalizing hard drugs in Portugal has completely turned around the addiction rates. H is dangerous but not near as dangerous as fent cuts and the media resurrecting stories about the big bad H in communities like the plague is not helping anything. It just creates hysteria among the misinformed, and a wider gap between them and drug users.

Anecdotal story to show how misinformed people are, around here, Percocet (oxy 5mg/acet 325) is given routinely and isn't stigmatizes in media. Because of that, everyone's familiar with it , considers it innocuous, I've heard many upstanding citizens joke about how great a couple perks and a drink feels..
BUT. If you mention oxy, which is what's in Percocet, people's eyes light up and they think of you as a hopeless junky. They've bought into the media hype hook, line, and sinker.

 

[MsBunnie]

They just did a huge raid operation here in my state. Over 40 dealers were apprehended in one day, stemming from the investigation of a specific stamp circulating with known fentanyl in the product. One reported investigation determined they were receiving the fentanyl straight from China. They didn't say it, but my opinion is that a lot of these big fentanyl transactions are occurring via drug markets on the deep web. That's all the information I really have.

 

[Ignio]

Querencia, if you took a look at the deep web you would see that fentanyl analogues in in powder form is being sold in grams and all the way up the kilos. One gram of Butyr-Fentanyl (for instance) costs no more than between 10-20 dollars (Be aware that this is a solution of 1% fentanyl and 99% of something to mix it in due to the strength of fentanyl). And this price is for one gram, imagine the cheap price you would see if you buy in bulk (I hope it is okay to mention prices here as it serves a purpose, otherwise let me know and I will remove it). As I mentioned you mostly see powders consisting of 1% fentanyl and 99% of some inactive substance when you see it in grams. I think this is because it is sold for people to snort or shoot themselves, not to cut heroin with. It is much cheaper than heroin, so if an addict doesn't have the money right now to heroin this might be a temporary solution to get a cheap fix even despite the dangers. But you can find pure fentanyl in powder as well on the deep web. Just not as readily available as the mixed due to the dangers related to selling such potent stuff.

On the deep web the 1%/99% solutions go under the name China White as you mention. Not long ago China White put in capsules was going around in my hometown resulting in a lot of ODs as we really had not seen fentanyl in powder form here before. But the easy access to it via the deep web make fentanyl something everyone can order as easily as a book from amazon. And if you don't know what you are doing like the guy who choose to sell this in capsules without informing people what it is other than it is an opioid it is very dangerous. And people bought it because it was way cheaper than heroin. Addicts care about their fix first and foremost, safety is not always the primary concern. The police Twittered warnings about it and the local news brought articles warning about it. I don't know if the police ever found the source.

I live far from the US and trends happening in the US always takes some time to make its way here, so it is my guess that we in my country are only starting to experience problems with fentanyl and it is gonna be worse if the things happening in the US is of any indication.

I don't know anything about the source of its original origin.

It is admirable stuff you are doing by involving yourself in outreach programmes etc. It would be interesting to see the article you might create as well.

 

[tacodude]

Look into the term China white and where it came from.

Look into the analog act and how the boom of fentanyl analogs caused it.

I'll let you come to your own conclusions what's going on nowadays, but really it's not much different at what happened in the past.

The real reason it's happened is the drug war is a failure.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

Law enforcement says that the fentanyl is coming from China.

The idea is that the fentanyl is produced in China and shipped to Canada and the US. Pill production machinery to make it into fake OxyContin and other valuable pharmaceuticals (like Percocet, or even Xanax apparently - which is not even an opioid) are mailed from China. Other similar synthetic high-strength opioids / fentanyl analogues are being sold as oxycodone and heroin as well, but it appears that fentanyl is currently the most common. Fentanyl analogues are sold fairly openly online by Chinese laboratories. And I've heard that fentanyl and pill presses can be bought on the dark web. Some authorities theorize large quantities of fentanyl arrive on ships on the west coast and spread inland from there. Like the fentanyl starts in Vancouver and trickles into Alberta. Not sure if that would be true of fentanyl in eastern Canada or not.

Hundreds of people have already died from fentanyl here in British Columbia in 2016. Easily more than the number of people killed in car crashes. It's my assumption that they did not realize they were using fentanyl. At this time in 2015 there had been about 50 fentanyl deaths so far that year here. Some drug advocates in Vancouver are speculating that ALL heroin in the city is actually fentanyl now or at least tainted with fentanyl.

You're right that legally prescribed fentanyl skyrocketed in the 90s/2000s as it was pushed as the new best thing in pain relief. Prescriptions for fentanyl in the US went up tenfold in less than 10 years. I knew people who died from legally prescribed fentanyl used as directed. There are a ton of different fentanyl products in North America in order to maximize profits.

Is your theory basically that there's a lot of fentanyl available because Big Pharma is supplying the black market as well as the legal market? I am kind of unclear on what you meant.

Prescription drugs sold legally in the US or Canada can be made overseas. It's hard to find out where exactly the legal fentanyl is made. Perhaps you will have some luck. According to the FDA, 40% of listed finished drugs in the US come from outside the country. And 80% of all ingredients used to manufacture drugs domestically reportedly come from overseas. Most of the labs are in China, with India coming in second. I'm not sure what the stats are for Canada but I suspect it's similar.

EDIT: Ok, so one example of legal fentanyl is the Duragesic fentanyl patch, owned by Johnson and Johnson. Used to have over $1.5 billion in yearly sales, just for that one fentanyl product. Not sure what it's at now - probably a lot lower. J&J have been busted for things like illegally delaying generic forms of fentanyl coming out in countries where their patents expired and successfully sued for their patches killing people. X'ian Janssen Pharmaceutical is the name of J&J's subsidiary that makes Duragesic in China, in one of their biggest labs. Make of that what you will. Personally I would hazard a guess that most legal fentanyl for the US/Canadian market IS coming from China but there are tons of labs in China, who knows if the illegal fentanyl is coming from the same labs or not.

Here's a good slide-show style article about how the fentanyl gets into Canada: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...tting-through-canadas-border/article29547443/


(I'll try to get back to you on your third question when I have more time.)

 

[Querencia]

Hey guys--

Thanks so much for reading my long-ass message and taking the time to reply. I'll say from the outset that I'm pushing 40 but I've been in favour of legalizing everything since I was 15 and had written "Legalize Weed" on my jean jacket. My mom, who worked on the Canadian Commission on the non-Medicinal Use of Drugs in the 1970s (which recommended decriminalization for weed, and the government ignored it), asked me why we shouldn't legalize everything. I said, "Well, it's dangerous." She said, "Don't you think people would have a better idea of what they were doing if they knew what they were buying? So they wouldn't overdose by accident?" And I was like, "I'm fifteen and I understand this idea, how do governments have such a hard time with it?" But of course I didn't see users as moral failures, or subhuman, or weak, or whatever people who dislike drug users (other than those who use alcohol or tobacco, etc).

I'm sorry about your wife; I'm a CPP as well so I know how maddening it is to be in pain all the time, and how guilty I feel that my hub has to pick up so much of the slack. She's lucky to have an understanding spouse.

1. Drug high ups are resourceful. They have networks, and friends in high places. I don't think it's uncommon for there to be sources in manufacturing, law enforcement, hospitals, etc. There's a dishonest guy in every bunch and always someone willing to give stuff or look the other way for the almighty dollar.

2. There are such things as fentanyl analogues, which are easy to get, act like fentanyl, and is a reasonably likely place for them to get massive quantity without raising eyebrows.

Solidarity with the Chronic Pain community! I'm not in pain but I live with the results of it full time. Were it not for opiates my wife would be pretty much unable to lie down OR sit up OR stand any day of the week. Thanks for sketching this out in a basic way--it really was a great introduction to the posts that followed!

Querencia, if you took a look at the deep web you would see that fentanyl analogues in in powder form is being sold in grams and all the way up the kilos. One gram of Butyr-Fentanyl (for instance) costs no more than between 10-20 dollars (Be aware that this is a solution of 1% fentanyl and 99% of something to mix it in due to the strength of fentanyl). And this price is for one gram, imagine the cheap price you would see if you buy in bulk (I hope it is okay to mention prices here as it serves a purpose, otherwise let me know and I will remove it). As I mentioned you mostly see powders consisting of 1% fentanyl and 99% of some inactive substance when you see it in grams. I think this is because it is sold for people to snort or shoot themselves, not to cut heroin with. It is much cheaper than heroin, so if an addict doesn't have the money right now to heroin this might be a temporary solution to get a cheap fix even despite the dangers. But you can find pure fentanyl in powder as well on the deep web. Just not as readily available as the mixed due to the dangers related to selling such potent stuff.

On the deep web the 1%/99% solutions go under the name China White as you mention. Not long ago China White put in capsules was going around in my hometown resulting in a lot of ODs as we really had not seen fentanyl in powder form here before. But the easy access to it via the deep web make fentanyl something everyone can order as easily as a book from amazon. And if you don't know what you are doing like the guy who choose to sell this in capsules without informing people what it is other than it is an opioid it is very dangerous. And people bought it because it was way cheaper than heroin. Addicts care about their fix first and foremost, safety is not always the primary concern. The police Twittered warnings about it and the local news brought articles warning about it. I don't know if the police ever found the source.

THIS is really interesting, and I had no idea. The drug users I know aren't web-equipped, mostly. They may have smartphones (a lot of homeless people do at this point since the internet is an important means of communication and community) but they don't have any place to get stuff mailed TO, and anyway they know a guy who sells them what they want. So they're at the mercy of their sellers. I'd never heard China White defined explicitly as fentanyl before, I'd just heard it called "heroin cut with fentanyl." This 1/99 thing is really eye-opening, thanks.

Look into the term China white and where it came from.

Look into the analog act and how the boom of fentanyl analogs caused it.

I'll let you come to your own conclusions what's going on nowadays, but really it's not much different at what happened in the past.

The real reason it's happened is the drug war is a failure.

I'm an aging punk rocker so I know it's been around at least since the early '80s, since there was an LA hardcore band called China White back then. Plus it was a problem in the 90s in a BIG way, but I wasn't clued in enough to pick through what the media said about it. They called it "china white heroin," and I believed it was just really potent H, rather than something completely different than H that's way too powerful. I'll start down that path with my research--thanks!

Law enforcement says that the fentanyl is coming from China.

The idea is that the fentanyl is produced in China and shipped to Canada and the US. Pill production machinery to make it into fake OxyContin and other valuable pharmaceuticals (like Percocet, or even Xanax apparently - which is not even an opioid) are mailed from China. Other similar synthetic high-strength opioids / fentanyl analogues are being sold as oxycodone and heroin as well, but it appears that fentanyl is currently the most common. Fentanyl analogues are sold fairly openly online by Chinese laboratories. And I've heard that fentanyl and pill presses can be bought on the dark web. Some authorities theorize large quantities of fentanyl arrive on ships on the west coast and spread inland from there. Like the fentanyl starts in Vancouver and trickles into Alberta. Not sure if that would be true of fentanyl in eastern Canada or not.

Whoa. This is not at all what I expected. Thanks for this background. In about May of 2013, I heard media reports here in Montreal saying that they'd busted a warehouse that had a 50-gallon tub of fentanyl. My first thought was, "What?! Where do you get that much fucking fentanyl?!" My second thought was, "Oh my god, people are going to start dying. There's no way there's only one spot with one tub." Strangely, it wasn't until 2014 that the fent really hit the marketplace, and precisely what was wrong with it was that it was pressed as green oxys. I had a guy tell me in the winter of 2014, "Oh yeah, I'm cleaning my shit up in a big way. Getting healthy." I said, "How?" I figured he was talking about using new rigs every time or something. He said, "Nothing but pills from here on in. No more bags." And that's the thing--at least back then, you could get Dilaudid at an absurdly cheap price, like less than a pint of beer. So people seemed to be of the opinion that it was WAY better to get a pharma pill and know the dose precisely than buy a bag and guess. When they started pressing the fent into counterfeit pills I thought, "OH FUCK." And yeah, I literally never saw that dude again. I don't know if the fent got him: he also (random gross thing) showed my teammate some weird growth he had on his dick, so maybe he had some crazy disease? I didn't look, because when you hear someone say, "Hey, you want to see something fucked up?" and then hear them unzipping their pants, and your coworker says, "Holy shit, dude, that's fucking disgusting, you need to go see a doctor," you don't look.

Hundreds of people have already died from fentanyl here in British Columbia in 2016. Easily more than the number of people killed in car crashes. It's my assumption that they did not realize they were using fentanyl. At this time in 2015 there had been about 50 fentanyl deaths so far that year here. Some drug advocates in Vancouver are speculating that ALL heroin in the city is actually fentanyl now or at least tainted with fentanyl.

You're right that legally prescribed fentanyl skyrocketed in the 90s/2000s as it was pushed as the new best thing in pain relief. Prescriptions for fentanyl in the US went up tenfold in less than 10 years. I knew people who died from legally prescribed fentanyl used as directed. There are a ton of different fentanyl products in North America in order to maximize profits.

Is your theory basically that there's a lot of fentanyl available because Big Pharma is supplying the black market as well as the legal market? I am kind of unclear on what you meant.

Not really-- what I was getting at was that like Bliss26 said above, there's always SOMEONE in any organization willing to break the rules to make a buck. I'm totally used to seeing people with all KINDS of dilaudids and other pills. I figure that's either because people are getting scripts and selling them, or because someone in the supply chain is offloading them onto the black market. Either way, they're here in abundance. I figured the same must be true of the fent--I knew that companies were all pushing it like hell. In the New Yorker article I mentioned, "Prescription For Disaster," the company is Cephalon, but I'm sure they were all on the same boat. It was what was trendy--perhaps because it didn't have any euphoria associated with it. My suspicion was that the more of that stuff is around, the more moves from the white to the grey market, and then down to the black. But I'm completely turned around by what you're saying about it coming in on ships in bulk from China.

Prescription drugs sold legally in the US or Canada can be made overseas. It's hard to find out where exactly the legal fentanyl is made. Perhaps you will have some luck. According to the FDA, 40% of listed finished drugs in the US come from outside the country. And 80% of all ingredients used to manufacture drugs domestically reportedly come from overseas. Most of the labs are in China, with India coming in second. I'm not sure what the stats are for Canada but I suspect it's similar.

EDIT: Ok, so one example of legal fentanyl is the Duragesic fentanyl patch, owned by Johnson and Johnson. Used to have over $1.5 billion in yearly sales, just for that one fentanyl product. Not sure what it's at now - probably a lot lower. J&J have been busted for things like illegally delaying generic forms of fentanyl coming out in countries where their patents expired and successfully sued for their patches killing people. X'ian Janssen Pharmaceutical is the name of J&J's subsidiary that makes Duragesic in China, in one of their biggest labs. Make of that what you will. Personally I would hazard a guess that most legal fentanyl for the US/Canadian market IS coming from China but there are tons of labs in China, who knows if the illegal fentanyl is coming from the same labs or not.

Here's a good slide-show style article about how the fentanyl gets into Canada: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...tting-through-canadas-border/article29547443/


(I'll try to get back to you on your third question when I have more time.)

This is all so great and helpful. Thank you so much.

One of the things I'd like to highlight is that the media keeps conflating deaths from prescription drugs with deaths from drugs used recreationally. Fentanyl is a weird one there because it tends to kill a surprising number of prescription-holders who use it as directed, let alone recreationally. (Like everyone has said above, nobody I know has ever used fentanyl recreationally because it's such a shitty short high with all the bang in the front end just knocking you out and then it's over in a flash.) The number of deaths keeps being used as an argument for why we need to crack down on pharmacies and doctors prescribing opiates to people in pain, which is obviously a personal subject for me because of my wife. But also sure, you can say that people are being prescribed pills for pain then becoming addicted because they discover the pills kill their psychological pain as well, but cracking down on anything isn't going to help kill psychological pain. Even if we could magically make all the opiates disappear, those people would just be drunk all the time. We need legal opiates for users alongside robust counseling and psychological help, but no government's in a hurry to pony up for that especially when all the Conservative party and half the Liberals will begin shrieking, "YOU'RE ENCOURAGING PEOPLE TO DO DRUGS! AND DOING DRUGS MAKES YOU A BAD PERSON!"

Whoo, I may be researching but am I ever not at work here. If this becomes an article and I eventually post it here, I'll have to do it under another name so I can't tie this post to my real name. I *am* a professional journalist, meaning I strive always to tell stories fairly and accurately without giving my side (every journalist has a side, no matter what) weight or taking points away from my opponents. But this is not exactly how I speak when I'm working professionally.

Thanks again for you time, guys.

 

[ErgicMergic]

Vote with your wallets, peeps.

Stop buying Rx pills on the black market and the demand and the subsequent consequences that come with that demand (bad actors) might start going down.

In the name of HR, given that fake pills are so dangerous: like that Xanax or Kpin you get from your dealer? Just buy etizolam or clonazolam pellets from a reputable domestic vendor, they are unapproved but at least you know exactly what you are getting and don't have to deal with bunk fakes or fentanyl-spiked fakes.

 

[zirbeldude2]

Maybe you want to get in touch with the user clubcard.
He researches this topic as well and also wrote an article afair.

 

[svacheme3]

I find it hard to believe "no one" wants the fentanyl laced bags. For me and people I know it's the opposite. People are dropping from such and such new stamp? WHAT STAMP WHERE!?!?!?!? And everyone has known that means fent analog for a couple years now at least.

The fent high is a little different but not alot, and who cares if it lasts half as long if you can do 1 bag instead of 5? Some analogs might have a shitty high, but straight fent and every mystery analog bag I've ever encountered was great.

They come from China because China doesn't have analog laws like we do, and has an extremely large chemical manufacturing industry. No restrictions on precursors and only specific banned compounds can't be made (e.g. they added the first round of analogs that showed up on the RC market, like acetyl fentanyl, so within days new ones were being made).

 

[Swimmingdancer]

The number of deaths keeps being used as an argument for why we need to crack down on pharmacies and doctors prescribing opiates to people in pain, which is obviously a personal subject for me because of my wife. But also sure, you can say that people are being prescribed pills for pain then becoming addicted because they discover the pills kill their psychological pain as well, but cracking down on anything isn't going to help kill psychological pain. Even if we could magically make all the opiates disappear, those people would just be drunk all the time. We need legal opiates for users alongside robust counseling and psychological help, but no government's in a hurry to pony up for that especially when all the Conservative party and half the Liberals will begin shrieking, "YOU'RE ENCOURAGING PEOPLE TO DO DRUGS! AND DOING DRUGS MAKES YOU A BAD PERSON!"

^This.

Don't even get me started on the War on Drugs. It's not about helping people or improving society. It's a business. Getting at the roots of addiction and self-medication aren't good for business.

Same with the pharmaceutical industry, it's only about profit and pharmaceutical companies are far worse than tobacco companies because its done under the guise of helping people. The goal is for as many people as possible to be on drugs for as long as possible. The War on Drugs aids in this: for example, with the current freakout over opioids Big Pharma can use that for profit by making new products under the guise of preventing abuse or treating addiction, circumventing patent expiry. Like they will take two existing pharmaceuticals on the market, combine them as a new medication and create a market for it, one example being Suboxone, which is buprenorphine + naloxone. There is no actual reason for the naloxone to be present in Suboxone other than to create a market for an expensive brand-name product, because the patent on Subutex had expired. Another popular technique is making changes to the delivery method of a drug and creating a reason for the new delivery system, for example to make it "harder to abuse" the drug. A well-known example of this is OxyContin. Purdue who makes it was like, "Oh we'll fix that oxy problem by making it tamper-resistant, in fact it should really be ONLY sold in our new impossible-to-abuse formulation." The Canadian Government was like, "Good idea, we'll draft a regulation straight away." The FDA was like, "Sure thing, we will ban generic oxycodone." Obviously even making the pills out of plastic didn't stop anyone from "abusing" it. The real goal was to keep the market share for Purdue.

With fentanyl, there are dozens of different legal fentanyl products. A new one is Onsolis, which uses a special patented drug-delivery technology called BEMA which is claimed to "improve delivery" and "reduce abuse". Surprise surprise, they are now developing buprenorphine and buprenorphine/naloxone formulations utilizing BEMA.

When fentanyl became popular and people started dying from legitimately prescribed fentanyl there was a crackdown on it and the black market ended up flooded with illicit fentanyl. Most of it these days is coming in raw form from pharmaceutical laboratories, then being made into fake heroin and fake pills. Originally the black market in fentanyl was mainly drugs diverted by people working in health care. Then as it was more widely prescribed for outpatient use it was increasingly sold by patients and stolen from pharmacies etc. You used to see the majority of black market fentanyl coming in the form of normal fentanyl products like the patches and lollipops. Now it is being imported on existing trade routes for illegal drugs and the majority of it is being disguised for sale as other more popular drugs like heroin and oxycodone. Fentanyl was already being made cheaply and it has some major advantages in that it is potent, requiring less space to transport a given number of standard doses, and that it is entirely synthetic, whereas heroin requires the opium poppy.

In the mid-2000s the bulk of the black market raw fentanyl in North America was said by the DEA (take what they say with a grain of salt of course) to be coming from Mexico, either directly from clandestine labs there or after being shipped to Mexico from China. There is strong evidence the fentanyl currently on the streets of Canada is originating in China.

 

[George27]

I presume no one WANTS to buy fentanyl when they buy a pill or bag (you can correct me if I'm wrong, as I may well be). That makes me presume that people producing the drugs have a bunch of fentanyl they have easy access to. What I want to know is: where are they getting it? Why is there so much of it?

1) Fentanyl synth is not so difficult + precursors are impossible to control.
https://www.erowid.org/archive/rhodium/chemistry/dronefent.txt
So on the supply side there is nothing to argue: there is and there will always be the chance to buy it in bulk.
2) yes is not as good as heroin.

So why someone ( only in a very few country!) sell it?
I think is about competition inside the criminal word.
I argue that selling fentanyl you can sidestep the big bad fellas that move heroin in bulk. Basically you are selling a second-rate opiate easy to get.

My theory is this: there's a lot of fentanyl out there because that's what's available. It's available because the pharma corps pushed it, and people who are on the dealing end of things got access to that somehow.

Definitly no, see point 1.

 

[tacodude]

While supposedly a much smaller amount of fent (less than 1 mg) provides equal analgesia and general opiate relief the effects are so short lived that 1 gram of fentanyl can be used faster than 1 gram of heroin especially when a tolerance develops and people start to need multiple mg doses of the fent where at that point it would probably require a very high amount of dope or even 50+ maybe even 100+ hydromorphone couldn't even touch withdrawals although it would take a really severe case for that, which is unfortunately becoming more common.

Another user posted about a less than common fentanyl analog going around much more potent than fentanyl that gets made into the China white bags in the bay area. A friend of mine who lives there I still communicate with told me within the last days he's been around someone with a fat bag of this stuff pure. They say it's methylsufentanil, but I can find nothing along that name only sufentinal and 3-methyl fentanyl although I've been told for a fentanyl compound it's got good legs and holds off withdrawal for hours vs only one. Either way it's just scary hearing stories of them getting flakes to put on tinfoil pure to smoke while the dealers could cut it if needed.

As people said who knows where it comes from due to the simple production process for an experienced person and a lab. I even remember a story within a few months back of how a couple in Oregon were producing it for themselves and became caught selling some grams to an undercover for some extra income. There's also the story of the Dr who started producing the ultra potent fentanyl analog for himself (carafentanyl maybe?) and had been even at work with an IV ready any second for a new push of the fentanyl up until he was caught and committed suicide due to the withdrawals even on an extremely high methadone dose as nothing could touch the tolerance he developed. The question isn't where fentanyl is coming from, but why? As well as if it is so disliked by recreational users why is it in the market and thriving vs heroin or any other morphine based opiod?

Edit: China white and China white heroin are completely different in my eyes. The first is likely a fentanyl compound and nothing else while the latter is likely fent mixed with China white. Honestly the latter is the way it's supposed to be done using fractions of fent with fractions of heroin to make a product with very little active problem that will give that rush, but also the warm fuzzy feeling those recreational users seek.

Hoping to really just get you to ask your own questions and do your own heavy research as this article could be just another paper about the fentanyl problem due to the recent surge in less than fentanyl strength analogs or really become a game changer in my eyes depending the effort put into it. You can ask people to give you answers, but without looking up the facts and history yourself I don't believe that you could honestly pull it all together in a way that connects why the problem emerged in the past and why it's emerging nowadays.

Also look into Thomas Jefferson's poppies. It's quite a fucked up story how the DEA attempted and succeeded likely to erase the history of what were Thomas Jefferson's unique strain of poppies from his medical garden. Then also look into dried poppy pods, poppy seed tea, and Kratom.

Edit 2: BEMA form bupe sounds super legit in my opinion and way better than teeth destroying sub strips that never dissolve in my experience right causing constant fluctuation of effect with the same dose while also removing the need of suboxone as those buccual patches are very unlikely to be extracted and abused in my eyes. Plus if it just peels off after releasing rather than building up constant spit I fear to swallow as it would only lead to causing headaches and stomach issues.

Edit 3: Final addition look into the recent pills that have originated from Sacramento with fentanyl.... First Xanax 2 white bars and then norco pill (539 or 593 maybe). That friend in the city also showed me a warning they have in the health clinics mentioning not only those two pills, but the a215 Roxi pills people like to smoke and the CDN 80s that I've never heard of being anywhere besides Canada also being the only ones to have had a batch that contained w-18 a super potent opiate.

 

[mazda01]

just to clear something up which is sort of minute in the overall picture of your questions, "china white" was originally very pure heroin produced in southeast asia because of production location and because of it's color used by soldiers in vietnam. the name "china white" was used again but for a fentanyl analog produced in 1976 called alpha-Methylfentanyl because whoever created it or used it wanted it to be synonomous with good pure heroin as a marketing stradegy.

 

[willbeeler00]

You sound like a fed asking where its coming from IMO.

 

[tacodude]

just to clear something up which is sort of minute in the overall picture of your questions, "china white" was originally very pure heroin produced in southeast asia because of production location and because of it's color used by soldiers in vietnam. the name "china white" was used again but for a fentanyl analog produced in 1976 called alpha-Methylfentanyl because whoever created it or used it wanted it to be synonomous with good pure heroin as a marketing stradegy.

I've heard this story, but if you go to the DEA website they list multiple fentanyl forms as China white

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

^Clubcard is a brilliant chemist.

 

[George27]

. The question isn't where fentanyl is coming from, but why?

Yes, this also my point.


Here I could add:
Why fentanyl is mainly a USA and Estonia (!!!) thing?
Why methampe is mainly a USA and SE Asia thing?
Why currently there is a mephedrone drought?
There is not a clear logic.

I think that we overate the skills of the black market.
It is not a big pharma with long-term management, advertising etc. So things can happen because they happen, also haphazardly.
For example, over a period there was just one man doing all the american fentanyl:
http://interactive.fusion.net/death-by-fentanyl/the-walter-white-of-wichita.html

About the same for LSD:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickard

There are Walter Whitman out there, that is.

 

[pbuilder]

Research chem fentanyl, or even just straight up real fent off the dark net. It's very cheap, and these hustlers buy it and press fake pills to make quick money. It's pretty sick though, i don't know how they can live with the od's on there concious. I guess some people just have zero morals.

At one point i was addicted to fentanyl, the withdrawals were absolute hell and it caused my first ever od, or almost od because i was alone and still managed to wake up later, syringe still in arm. My second od was cause i was drunk and shot up h though, bad choices i've made to chase the opiate high.

Currently clean from iv opiates or any real opiates for around 8 months, and i used kratom to bridge me off for about 5 months and then now clean from literally any opiate type drug for 3 months including kratom. It was kinda hard but a steady taper got me clean.

Kinda picked up drinking instead though, so maybe i should go back onto the kratom because drinking is probably worse.

Oh well, actually naw fuck kratom and opiate withdrawal, at least with alcohol i can enjoy my substance socially and just sip lite beer to avoid serious alcoholism. I don't ever wanna touch fent or an opiate again, kratom was a life safer to initially get me off the hard stuff though.

I am aware of the dangers of alcoholism though and should prob go to some a.a meetings lol.

 

[Ignio]

Through coincidences, using my network and using a particular skill set I have was able to get access to pharmaceutical Morphine and Fentanyl meant for IV and which were being transported to spot where it would be distributed to different hospitals. I got enough from this so I had Morphine and Fentanyl that lasted me for quite a while. Compared to the little resources I have and the little effort I put into this I would not dare imagine how much pharmaceutical gear someone with bad intentions and more resources would be able to get their hands on.

The underlying system supporting our health care systems is not that complicated. If you have patience and observe and gather information plus know people in the right positions and know the right IT-systems intimately you can do a whole lot of things. I would bet there is infinite methods for gaining access to things people really want to pay for.