Hey guys-- thanks to everyone for their replies. It's really cleared things up for me. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like it'll make for a good article (well, also fortunately because that would be one more thing for me to do for not very much money), since "people get it from China because it's cheap and easy to make" isn't as sexy as "corporations push dangerous meds irresponsibly, flood the market with fent making it super easy to find, and now it's killing people," which was my initial belief. Pretty much everyone is saying, "Fentanyl is so easy to get because it's so easy for suppliers to get." Which is basically like saying "people listen to Katy Perry because she's on the radio a lot and iTunes prioritizes her music." Not exactly groundbreaking stuff.
BUT--actually, there's one thing I haven't looked at yet. In Montreal, we got hit with the fentanyl starting about three years ago, and it seems like it peaked two years ago. Sounds like it's been hitting BC really hard, and i know last year it was in the east coast of the United States. Is there some reason why suddenly it started appearing a few years ago? Or is that just the coincidence with the rise of the dark net? (That's a subject that's been written about to death by people like DailyDot and Gawker long before it made it to the Times and the big leagues, so nothing really exciting there.)
To the person who suggested I was a cop, given my willingness to privately provide whatever kind of identifying information you want, tied to my reporting on police brutality in Montreal AND to my volunteering with the homeless (whom the Montreal police seem to consider shooting targets), I don't know where you got that idea. But I don't consider it a fucking compliment to be called a cop, especially not for asking basic drugs-101 questions that I'm sure the damned DEA/RCMP wouldn't go around asking. I'm not 100% sure what this forum is like and whether it's considered cool to accuse someone of being a cop because they ask very wide open questions specifically asking folks NOT to incriminate themselves or someone who isn't them, but in my circle of friends that sort of thing is a reasonably serious insult.