Id take the matrix ones over the gel ones personally
Everyone I know that died from fent killed themselves with the matrix patches.
The gel patches (are they even available anymore?) killed less people for two reason. The first was the patch itself cost more on the street. They were massive and everyone I knew would cut them open to get at the gel. I guess they respected it more and were so afraid of it that they only consumed tiny pieces of the gel. Usually they consumed it by mixing it with another substance. I knew several people that would put them on and apply heat to make it release the active material faster (so they said). Then they'd remove the patch once they had gotten close to a nod. Others would smoke the gel. But they weren't as popular as other opioids and like I said before they were always a drug of last resort. The people I knew didn't like fent. and didn't want to do fent.
The matrix patches lull you in and seem safer. But the only way to defeat the time release is to put them in your mouth. Everyone I know that died from the matrix patches made the same mistake. They would place a piece of it in their mouth and nod out. The only reason more people didn't die is because they were with someone else that could take the patch out of their mouth once they started to become unresponsive.
Fent is just a horrible drug all around. It's too dangerous to play with, it provides no euphoria, it doesn't make you warm like other opioids and it's impossible to know just how much is in the piece of the patch or the little bit of gel you've taken out of the patch.
Everyone I know that died from doing fent were very heavy experienced users of strong opioids. People that thought nothing of snorting half of an old OC80 or Opana ER tablet. Poly drug users with a high tolerance to all kinds of CNS depressants. The type of people that would mix high doses of xanax, valium, oxycodone, oxymorphone, hydromorphone, gabapentin, lyrica and anything else that was available while chasing it all down with 80+ proof hard liquor. The type of people that stayed nodded and blacked out everyday. People with prescriptions for 200+ bar xanax and 150+ roxis a month.
If it can kill people like that from one little mistake an opioid naive users doesn't stand a chance.
I'm pretty liberal with drugs and think none of them should be banned. But if there was one drug that shouldn't be on the market it's fent. and all its analogs for sure. There is absolutely no good reason for it to be on the market. It's far too strong while providing nothing of value for an opioid junkie. The only legitimate use for it is end of life care and ODing a terminal patient on purpose. It only exists on the illicit market these days because it's easier to ship in powder form than other opioids.