America's crisis of drug-overdose deaths has largely spared California. At 11.2 deaths per 100,000 people in 2016, California?s rate of fatal overdoses is among the lowest in the nation. But there are signs that is changing.
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Fentanyl could have arrived in California before it did other regions of America, and burned through Los Angeles' vulnerable homeless population. But it didn't. According to the National Drug Early Warning System, in 2016, fentanyl and its analogues accounted for just 0.2 percent of Los Angeles County drug seizures reported by police. There were 373 deaths attributed to fentanyl in California in 2017; meanwhile, states with much smaller populations, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, saw 3,446 and 3,656 fentanyl deaths, respectively. Deaths attributed to fentanyl remain low in California compared to most other states. Why?
California's demand for illicit opioids is largely met by the Sinaloa cartel And, for now, the type of opioid that the cartel has chosen to export to California is black tar heroin.
People who use heroin tell me it is difficult to mix fentanyl into black tar heroin. Fentanyl is commonly a powder and black tar heroin is, as its name suggests, usually sticky to touch. It's hard to sneak a powder into a substance that's viscous. In contrast, China white heroin, which predominates in other parts of the country, is a powder, and therefore easily adulterated with fentanyl without giving consumers a clue. In most areas where fentanyl has come to account for a majority of drug-overdose deaths, it has infiltrated supply via markets for China white heroin.
California's success in avoiding the worst consequences of America's opioid epidemic is therefore not the result of any government action or less drug use. Instead, Californians largely owe thanks to West Coast drug dealers' traditional preference for black tar heroin over China white.
