Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic

Grossly misleading title. This book is about synthetic drugs AKA Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPSs), e.g., flakka, bath salts, spice, k2, NBOMe, synthetic pot, synthetic LSD, synthetic MDMA, everything you want to know, history, tragic stories, inventors, etc. With current drug laws, not only are dosages unknown but what drugs are cut w is unknown and what chemicals involved are unknown, leading to tens of thousands of overdoses. If safety was their concern, Fentanyl would be illegal and all drugs would be decriminalized and regulated but their main concern is pharmaceutical profits from patents. Very fascinating read. Most synthetics are produced in China in an ironic reversal of the West poisoning China w opium. The irony cannot be lost on the Chinese. I think the publishers picked the title thinking people would be more interested in the fentanyl epidemic than the synthetic drug explosion

Wow…so raw and informative.Fentanyl is killing so many people!We are in a crisis and, in order to fight it we must first understand it.

The title is a little misleading - the book encompasses lab created drugs with Fentanyl being one component. Ben Westhoff writes an engaging and wide-ranging book that encompass raw material providers in China, an abandoned ICBM base that was used by a drug kingpin, and good Samaritans trying to minimize overdoses. Westhoff is strongly emphatic toward the victims and their family members.The main thesis of the book is that synthetic drugs are becoming more dangerous. Changes to how their manufacturing including more impurities have only made them deadlier. He advocates increasing information available to the users by allowing third-party groups to test for impurities. Most of these testing groups are on the margins of the law at best. Fentanyl, Inc is well written and combines an worldwide overview of the synthetic drug problem with passionate advocacy. I am not sure how realistic Westhoff's ideas are but they are fascinating change of pace from those wanting additional enforcement or rampant legalization.

This book illimunates a topic which is poorly understood yet is quietly ruining generations of Americans: that of designer drugs. Ben Westhoff does a great job of spelling out the severity of the issue, takes the reader through its chemistry and production locations, and tells the heart wrenching effects it has had in the United States.Fentanyl was originally a breakthrough drug that allowed for pain reduction during surgery. It and its analogues have been hijacked in a movement away from plant based drugs to those concocted in labs. Many of the chemists behind the drugs fret about how they are now used: they allow for cheap production, are easy to smuggle and do not appear in drug tests.Westhoff somehow gains access to a drug facility in China. Amazingly, most of the production is done legally and often times benefit from Chinese subsidies. The owners know how to coyly move from one concoction to another to sidestep local laws. These newly created drugs have interactions that are unknown to anyone. Hanging over this narrative is the possible strategic benefit China may be gaining by drugging large swaths of citizens in the United States.From there, Mexican cartels (operating like "McDonalds") buy the product, cut it and distribute it through North America and Europe. Oddly, the US's ability to cut down on more natural drugs has created a market for designer drugs that can be made quietly in a lab and are easy to mail. The most concerning impact of all of this is that addicts who believe they are buying a natural drug in which they know the dosage are now buying products of unknown provenance. 93% of users would prefer to use traditional marijuana over synthetics and its most likely a similar story for those who use N-bombs over LSD. However, instead of getting the right products, they are taken chemicals never ingested by humans before (something like 90% of MDMA tested was not MDMA).Numbers on the problem:-Carfentanil was responsible for killing more than eleven hundred Ohio residents between July 2016 and June 2017 alone.-American cocaine overdose deaths remained fairly steady throughout the first decade of the 2000s—ranging from roughly four thousand to seven thousand—but in the second decade began to surge, exceeding fourteen thousand in 2017.-According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 150 new illicit drugs were bought and sold between 1997 and 2010. Another 150 appeared in just the next three years, and since then, in some years as many as 100 new chemicals have appeared, with synthetic cannabinoids especially common.-In 2012, St. Louis saw 92 opioid-related deaths, a number that rose to 123 in 2013 and up to 256 in 2017.Exacerbating all of this is that the number of addicts increased dramatically during the prescription opioid crisis. The author mentions the anecdote that in Kermit, WV (population 400, nine million pills were distributed in two years. And in one of the (sadly) more prescient thoughts by a politician, Arlen Specter attacked a mere monetary settlement against Perdue Pharma in 2007 by saying, "I see fines with some frequency and think that they are expensive licenses for criminal misconduct. I do not know whether that applies in this case, but a jail sentence is a deterrent and a fine is not.”Westhoff suggests not blaming China as they have often been very strict in drug enforcement. Also, supply can easily move to other countries such as India. Better to focus on demand to limit the criminal element (great Friedman quote: "“See, if you look at the Drug War from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel, that’s literally true.” Policies in Slovenia and Spain are examined. Testing drugs for quality, supervised usage and decriminalization seem to help.

the word Fentanyl is in the mouth of everyone nowadays, the world is changing, drugs are changing and the pharmaceutical high is increasingly substituting conventional recreational drugs, which explains deeply the opioid plague overseas.

I’ve seen others criticizing the author for the way he has portrayed the chemistry or how he has described/compared certain drug/compounds. To an extent these are fair criticisms, but on the other hand the author never promises or infers that his purpose was to provide a deeply scientific and technical deconstruction of these drugs/compounds.The primary purpose was to provide an overview of actors, causes and forces within the Fentanyl crisis. As such, he has consciously chosen to avoid complex discussions of molecular modelling to instead discuss topics such as: health and drug policy, pharmaceutical marketing, as well as the history of pain medicine r&d.That said, I believe that the author has done only a decent job of this. Too often, the author jumped to conclusions/connections, framed evidence in a manner meant solely to support his argument or simply restated well-known information as though it was the first time it was being reported.Overall, I’d recommend the book if you are looking for an easy and quick read (only 281 pages) that will provide a cursory overview of this modern crisis. But, if like me, you’re more wonkish in your interests, you’d be better spent reading something more technical or at least written by someone more well-versed in the fields of policy and science.Fair score is 3.5 to 4 stars.

A good christmas present