For 50 years well-founded predictions of fentanyl’s imminent displacement of heroin were repeatedly made by narcotics experts to the oligarchic circles sponsoring Harm Reduction
Belgium’s Paul Janssen, founder of Janssen Pharmaceutical, created fentanyl in 1959. Fentanyl proved stronger, faster and less nauseating than existing opioids. Johnson & Johnson purchased Janssen Pharmaceutical in 1961.
Janssen published his methodology in the early-1960s. His process involves heating caustic solvents to high temperatures in specialized equipment. The DEA still considers Janssen’s method “beyond the rudimentary skills of most clandestine chemists.” (1)
Fentanyl’s addictiveness quickly became apparent. UN controls on fentanyl appeared in 1964. The first FDA-approved fentanyl pill (1968) contained only 2% fentanyl to thwart recreational use.
In 1975 fabled chemist Alexander Shulgin published Drugs of Abuse in the Future to warn:
Shulgin discussed problems which will occur:
Emphasizing:
Shulgin picked piperidones as heroin’s likely substitute. Piperidones can be made by mixing nitric acid with piperine – a black pepper extract. Fentanyls are piperidone-based.
A popular fixture at California’s Bohemian Clubs, Shulgin’s ideas permeated ruling class circles.
The late-1970s spawned fentanyl’s first illicit traffickers. The gang never got caught. They made their millions and closed shop. Geographic profiling of fentanyl overdoses situates their lab in Orange County, Ca. They marketed fentanyl as “China White” heroin. Revered as heroin’s Holy Grail, China White contained nary a heroin molecule; it was alpha-methylfentanyl. (3)
China White resurfaced in New York in 1991. Unlike the Orange County operation, Mafia heroin networks did the trafficking. The lab, hidden in Wichita, got busted in 1993 but not before reaping 126 fatalities. (4)
The China White intros were two of several illicit fentanyl ventures foreshadowing the 2005 wave. These early operations: a) lasted only a few years; b) were localized to a few cities; c) sold fentanyl as heroin; and d) relied on one chemist with one fentanyl recipe. (5)
Conversely, the 2005 fentanyl tsunami hit forty North American cities at once. This time Fenty came to stay. Initially sold as heroin, or surreptitiously mixed with heroin, fentanyl was eventually trafficked pure and by name. A 2017 DEA report records fentanyl being sold as fentanyl, and overdoses resulting from straight fentanyl. DEA reports lag the street by years.
The 2005 wave swept ashore many fentanyl variations. (6) Between 2012 and 2017 alone, 17 novel fentanyl analogues appeared. (7)
The 2005 push targeted pre-existing heroin milieus. Westhoff relays front-line tactics:
One addict recalls going to her hood’s heroin hang-out only to be accosted by strangers handing-out free bean-shaped ‘heroin’ pills to any user with a cell-phone. Hours after getting her “beans” she got a call telling her how to buy more. The beans contained the strongest ‘heroin’ she’d ever taken. (8)
A St. Louis addict-dealer scored extra heroin by riding shotgun whenever his supplier met “the Mexicans.” They drove to malls with cash stashed in their car. At the mall they exchanged car keys with the Mexicans, then left in the Mexicans’ heroin-loaded car. During one transaction, circa 2005, the Mexicans said there would be a box in the car marked “F.” The St. Louis dealers were to mix F with the heroin at a ratio of one to seven. The Mexicans specified which coffee grinder to use for mixing. The F was unrequested and free. Sales boomed. (9)
In 1996 William Pickard gave a presentation to Harvard’s Faculty Club titled: “Factors Promoting the Spread of Fentanyl Manufacture.” (10) (Pickard earned an M.A. from Kennedy School of Government before serving as Deputy Director of UCLA’s Drug Policy Program where he studied fentanyl.) Pickard explained to Harvard’s faculty how online “cookbooks” increased fentanyl availability.
After Janssen’s early-1960s work, several papers detailing alternative fentanyl synthesis techniques were published, mostly by chemists working for defense research institutes. (11) New synthesis techniques were simpler and safer. Some didn’t require specialised equipment or difficult-to-obtain chemicals. Innovations bypassed steps, increased yields and improved purity. Less time and labour were needed. New methods generated less waste thereby minimizing a lab’s footprint. (12)
One method, posted under the pseudonym “Siegfried,” provided advances on routes using the commercially available precursor, N-phenethyl-4-piperidone (NPP). (Phenethyl is a rose-bud extract commonly used in perfumes.) Siegfried also showed criminals how to dilute and package fentanyl. A lab busted in Toluca, Mx in 2006 followed Siegfried’s recipe. (13)
Fentanyl production was thus no longer a specialists’ preserve. Previous fentanyl rings were hindered by dependence on one irreplaceable chemist (often coming from Big Pharma or the military). Losing the chemist kiboshed the enterprise.
Pacific Coast-based Jalisco New Generation was the first Mexican cartel to traffic fentanyl. Mexico’s biggest cartel, Sinaloa, also west-coasters, soon followed. Control of Pacific ports facilitated trade with China. Between 2005 and 2015, Chinese companies supplied all fentanyl and/or precursors. Product arrived in standard shipping containers. The ill-starred Toluca lab imported its NPP from Xiamen. Between the Toluca bust and 2019 four more Mexican labs were taken down. (14)
Fentanyl’s third wave began in 2013. In that year US officials seized 1 kilo of fentanyl. In 2017 they seized 674 kilos. The target market was exclusively North America. As late as 2015, Europe’s meager illicit fentanyl supply came from hospital theft and hospital waste scavenging.
The Rand Corporation’s 2019 update of Pickard’s presentation identified four factors behind fentanyl’s surge.
Firstly, after Pickard’s presentation several simpler fentanyl recipes appeared. The “one pot” Gupta Method allows for synthesis to take place under non-laboratory conditions and at room temperature. A manuscript detailing the innovative Valdez Method went online in 2014. Within 5 years it had been downloaded 70,000 times. (15)
Except for the Walz & Hsu Method all modern fentanyl recipes use NPP or 4-ANPP (4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine) for precursors. Online publications now explain how to make these precursors from widely available pre-precursors.
Back in 1996 Pickard warned that lack of controls on NPP and 4-ANPP preordained fentanyl’s rise. The DEA belatedly restricted NPP in 2007, and 4-ANPP in 2010. (16) The US later placed the whole phenethyl-piperidine family under surveillance. (17)
In 2016 Secretary of State John Kerry asked UN Secretary-General Moon to regulate NPP and 4-ANPP internationally. Kerry identified 178 suppliers of NPP and 79 suppliers of 4-ANPP. Half were in China. The UN restricted NPP and 4-ANPP in 2017. China criminalized four fentanyls in 2017, then restricted NPP and 4-ANPP in 2018.
Secondly, innovations in e-commerce, cryptocurrency, anonymous browsing software (i.e., The Onion Router) and the Dark Web facilitated fentanyl trafficking. These techno-developments expand distribution networks and allow novices to gain market access. (18) In 2010 fentanyl was still purchasable on the surface net. Now, fentanyl mongers must cruise the Dark Web. (19)
Thirdly, China’s emergence as an industrial superpower and the concomitant growth of China-US trade accelerated fentanyl production and sales. In 2011 the US Postal Service streamlined e-Packet service with China. Parcels under 2 kg can be shipped for $10. By 2017 annual China-US e-Packet volume reached 500 million units. (This doesn’t include parcels shipped via DHL or FedEx etc.) (20) There’s no way to screen such immense quantities of packages.
China isn’t a narco-state. Rogue chemists are hard for any nation’s police to find. Chinese police are flummoxed because China’s 5,000 pharmaceutical firms and 400,000 chemical firms now account for 40% of global chemical commerce. (21) More importantly, as China suppresses illicit production the rogue chemists simply move elsewhere. India is a new fentanyl hotspot.
Furthermore, if a specific chemical isn’t restricted then no law is broken by making it. Chemists elude narcs with subtle, often reversible, modifications of restricted chemicals. As well, chemists prolifically invent yet-to-be Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS). Globally, between 1997 and 2019 five hundred unrestricted NPSs hit the streets. Westhoff toured the offices of NPS giant, Yuancheng Corp. Yuancheng’s online sales army are up-to-the-minute current on changes to restrictive schedules. (22)
Fourthly, fentanyl’s potency-to-weight ratio is a smuggler’s dream. America’s annual heroin consumption was estimated at 45 tonnes in 2019. (23) Fentanyl is 25 times more potent than heroin. Several passenger carloads could satisfy American illicit opioid needs for a year. Initially, fentanyl’s shorter-lasting buzz and horror-show morbidity turned-off older heroin consumers. They preferred heroin. Smugglers dictated the heroin-to-fentanyl transition.Rand avoids Big Pharma’s role in fentanyl’s rise. Rand discusses only fentanyl’s displacement of heroin, not legal opioid’s fostering of illegal opioid demand.Although legal fentanyl accounts for a small fraction of opioid abuse, it’s worth reminding that a huge legal fentanyl industry exists. Johnson & Johnson, Archimedes, Orexo and Teva manufacture tonnes of fentanyl pills, lozenges, lollipops and skin patches. In 2015 US doctors wrote 6.5 million prescriptions for fentanyl wares. (Political pressure lowered this to 2.5 million a year.) (24) Additionally, Pfizer sells a river of injectable fentanyl-citrate to hospitals for anesthesia and extreme pain relief. The Dark Web abounds with ads for stolen corporate fentanyl products. Diversion happens all along the supply chain. (25)
Harm Reductionists blame the opiocalypse on fentanyl. This dodge begs three counter-points:
· Illicit fentanyl trafficking pre-dates Harm Reduction.
· For 50 years well-founded predictions of fentanyl’s imminent displacement of heroin were repeatedly made by narcotics experts to the oligarchic circles sponsoring Harm Reduction.
· IF Harm Reduction is failing because of the presence of fentanyl or other Novel Psychoactive Substances THEN Harm Reduction will forever fail because said commodities aren’t going away.
Footnotes
1. Rand Corporation. The Future of Fentanyl and Other Synthetic Opioids, 2019, p. 59.
2. Shulgin, Alexander. Drugs of Abuse in the Future, Clinical Toxicology, 1975
3. Westhoff, Ben. Fentanyl, Inc. How Rogue Chemists are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic, Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 2019, p. 37-41.
4. Ibid p. 43.
5. Rand p. 57-8 and 71.
6. Ibid p. 57-8 and 71.
7. Westhoff, p. 51.
8. Ibid p. 128-9.
9. Ibid p. 142-3.
10. Ibid p. 94; see also Rand p. 56.
11. Rand p. 60-1.
12. Ibid p. 58-9 and 62.
13. Ibid p. 62.
14. Ibid p. 62.
15. Ibid p. 62-3.
16. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Fentanyl, January 2023; see also Rand p. 63.
17. Ibid; see also Rand p. 66.
18. Rand p. 68.
19. Westhoff p. 11.
20. Rand p. 70.
21. Ibid p. 65.
22. Westhoff p. 33 and 37-8.
23. Rand p. 70.
24. Drug Enforcement Administration. Fentanyl, January 2023
25. Westhoff p. 53.
Read next: Who Is Responsible for Illegal Fentanyl Use?
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William Walter Kay, Ecofascism.com
