#WTFentanyl Part Three: Illicit Fentanyl
Hello! Welcome to Overdosed a weekly newsletter on drug policy and people who use drugs by me, Diane Roznowski.
Attention Pennsylvania readers: Pennsylvania is hosting Stop Overdoses in PA Week from September 16-20 and 23-27. For the second year in a row, the Commonwealth will be giving out free naloxone (the medication that reverses opioid overdoses). This year there will be two dates: Wednesday, September 18, and Wednesday, September 25. Last year they ran out quickly so I would recommend going early. For more info check out this tweet from the PA’s Health Department:
When my sister Emily died, it took months to get her toxicology report. My mom called me at school and told me Emily had three drugs in her system when she died: caffeine, nicotine, and fentanyl.
Emily bought a few bags of what she thought was heroin, and most of them included heroin. Unfortunately, the bag she used was pure fentanyl and it killed her instantly. Drug dealers and black-market distributors will make pure packets like this to intentionally kill their clients. Emily once told my mom and me why they do it. They do it because they know drug users will seek out the dealers of people they know who recently overdosed thinking that these dealers have purer drugs.
In addition to creating death packets of pure fentanyl to increase demand, a lot of drug selling operations use illicit fentanyl to either cut heroin or in place of heroin in their mixtures because it’s stronger and cheaper. Because fentanyl is super potent, it’s easy to have packets that include fatal doses of the drug.
Like with many opioids, some of the fentanyl in the drug supply is fentanyl that was diverted from prescriptions and medical settings, but the majority is coming into the US from China and Mexico. The fentanyl coming from Mexico comes in like any other drugs that come from Mexico. It comes through ports of entries and other means like tunnels, but the fentanyl coming from Mexico often originated in China.
In China, selling fentanyl isn’t illegal. Many have realized selling fentanyl online is a smart business decision, so people in the United States can buy fentanyl online from Chinese businesses. They can do it on the regular internet and the dark web. These businesses then ship the fentanyl to the US via the United States Postal Service.
They use the USPS instead of private carriers like FedEx and UPS because US law requires private carriers to track international shipments and record the sender, the receiver, and the contents of the package. The USPS is exempt from this policy and doesn’t have enough manpower to track all packages entering the US from abroad. Additionally, there are a very limited number of staff at the International Mail Facilities who are responsible for finding drugs entering the country in this manner.
In 2018, Congress passed a law requiring the USPS to start tracking this information but they still have not implemented all of the aspects of this law. The Postal Service says they are working to comply with the law as quickly as possible.
Over the last couple of years, deaths from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids have risen at extremely alarming rates. In 2018, an estimated 31,473 Americans died from synthetic opioid overdoses.
Source: CDC - Drug Overdose Deaths in the United States, 1999–2017
Nothing we do will bring them back, but we can prevent future deaths from fentanyl. We need to have accurate representations of this drug in the media and we need to stop banning harm reduction strategies that are proven to prevent overdose deaths. We’ve been complacent for too long.
Further Reading
Fentanyl, Inc. by Ben Westhoff - Tuesday night I attended an event at Politics and Prose at the Wharf about this book. I’ve attended a lot of talks for books about the opioid epidemic, but this one stands out. Ben ended his talk by saying he sees harm reduction as the way to solve this crisis instead of trying to stop drugs from entering the country. I’m really looking forward to reading this book and will share my thoughts once I finish it!
The Washington Post - The flow of fentanyl: In the mail, over the border
Filter - National Guard Drops $100K on Fentanyl Fear-Mongering Classes for Cops
New York Times - Fear, Loathing and Fentanyl Exposure
Columbia Journalism Review - A dangerous fentanyl myth lives on
Current Reading
D.C.’s New Naloxone Pilot Wants to End Stigma Around Carrying the Drug (written by my good friend Chelsea Cirruzzo if you’re a DC reader you should consider subscribing to her newsletter, Caffeine Queen of DC)
Purdue Pharma reaches tentative opioid settlement with some: sources
Every US community can have a say in national opioid suit settlement, judge rules
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Until next time,
