Once upon a time, there were opium wars. And reefer madness. The hippies and Timothy Leary did LSD. The disco folks snorted coke, and Marion Barry did crack. The ravers took Ecstasy. College kids wandered around high on magic mushrooms. Junkies and rock stars did heroin. You occasionally heard about some lunatic doing PCP or mescaline or horse tranquilizers like ketamine, but for the most part you could keep track of the recreational drugs people were using on ten fingers (maybe you'd need your toes for pills like Valium, Xanax and Percocet) .
Then I read Methland (and wrote this fabulous review of it) and watched Breaking Bad. Scary stuff. Next came the opioid epidemic, and the ensuing plague of heroin addiction. I read Dreamland and Dopesick. I thought I was well-informed on the state of illicit drug use and abuse in America.
I was wrong. And like to recommend a book that will explain. I think it's a must read for parents and teachers and coaches and psychonauts.
Fentanyl, Inc. How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic, by Ben Westhoff, comprehensively covers the new drug scene. And there's no way to fight it. The only way to win the war is Gandhi-like pacifism, in the face of a wave of chemicals so powerful and various that no top-down institution can keep track of them.
Called NPS . . . which-- depending on your SAT verbal score-- either stands for "new psychoactive substances," or the slightly the more advanced "novel psychoactive substances."
Fentanyl analogues such as carfentanil (which is used to tranquilize elephants and rhinos) and acetylfentanyl and benzoylfentantanil.
Synthetic cathinones, such as Meow Meow (4-MMC) and Ice Cream (3-MMC) and Flakka (a- PVP).
Synthetic cannabinoids like Spice and K2 and JWH-018 and 5F-ADB.
Fentanyl precursors, which can be bought from China, so that you can manufacture various new fentanyl cocktails.
And pages of others. But you get the point.
So your heroin, which is hard to make-- you need fields of poppies-- is most definitely laced with fentanyl. Fentanyl is notoriously strong-- a pinhead's worth could kill you-- but it's easier to manufacture than heroin. This is how Lil Peep and Tom Petty and Michelle McNamara all met their maker (fentanyl combined with sedatives, which is a deadly combination). Prince and Mac Miller too.
Westhoff goes to China to investigate where all the precursors are coming from, and he finds it remarkably easy to buy them. Chinese companies will even ship in mis-marked bags, as banana chips or whatever, to disguise them.
The Opium War has flipped. Surprisingly, there's plenty of fentanyl abuse in China, as well, despite the fact that they execute drug dealers there. This is strong, addictive stuff. And nobody knows what they're taking, even the psychonauts that make the stuff.
The only "successes" in this minefield of chemical lunacy have been the harm-reduction agencies like Bunk Police and DanceSafe that go to raves and clubs and festivals and offer chemical analysis of drugs for partiers, so that they know what they're taking, and can make an informed decision. This has worked incredibly well in Europe, where laws allow these companies to operate, but they are not exactly legal in America, because of the Rave Act. In 2017, the United States-- population 326 million-- had seventy thousand drug overdose deaths. The European Union-- population 510 million-- had only 7600.
This book gave me the feeling that everyone is on drugs. The math is crazy. Many of you know the story of Kermit, West Virginia . . . a town of 400 that was prescribed 5 million opioid pills. That's awful enough. But at least they knew what they were getting. This new stuff is scarier: more potent, more random, more volatile, and often quite cheap. I hope and pray my kids figure out a way to avoid it.
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