I have been a freelance journalist for over twenty years for such magazines (both print and online) as the Smithsonian Online, Finnair, and a host of other in-flights and international media. About seven years ago I gave up pitching for articles as it seemed that at the time every in-flight magazine, and most others, only wanted the 3-10 best of this, that, and the other. Just prior to that one of the best editors I ever had told me that he had been part of the team that produced The Times (UK) online magazine, and, for a joke, decided to publish a piece about five best of something, the first time it had ever been done by a reputable publication. Within a week most of the main media had picked it up; within a month the idea had gone viral, the last resort of writers who couldn't string 500 words together to make a coherent article. He said it was the single worst decision he ever made in his editorial career.
Prior to that, what is known as 'longform' writing was the norm - I didn't even get warmed up until around the 500 word mark. Having read your excellent piece I researched longform, and I'm going back to it.
Congratulations and thank your for an excellently researched and written piece of work.
A final comment. I'm 71, didn't enter journalism until I was 50. I come from a time when articles were read, appreciated and saved. It looks as though that time might be back.
11
This is why I pay for the New York Times
12
as far as China and the West is concerned, this is a case of what goes around comes around. Opium sold to the Chinese in the 19th century and fentanyl to the States this century. But the Chinese need to consider that this is not the end of the cycle and fentanyl can spread through their society with devastating results.
5
where is the line between legal opiates that seniors and sick people need, and the creeps who sell fentanyl stuff....
when people can no longer get their legitimate vicodans/percocets they've gotten for years, they go to the street for ...sumthing to ease pain. I don't know the solution, but its not denying people their meds they've had for years...
We don't want this story to become our history.
What can be done about it?
Get organised Dems! Put away the tote bag and bring it on, there has never been a more important moment in our lives...where is Dan Pfieiffer’s superpac?
But the world wants free trade with China
Great, compelling journalism. Where is Zhang Jian and who got paid off to release him?
3
My takeaway is China turns a blind eye because they don't like our country and our way's so this is their version of death bya thousand cuts. Maybe they should use the death penalty but at 3% of their GDP in the black economy highly doubtful.
2
Superb investigation and reporting. One sentence needs grammatical correction: "Chinese officials, moreover, seemed to have fresh memories of the opium scourge imposed on their country by Western merchants, had little sympathy for rich countries battling drug-abuse scandals of their own making."
6
Demand $ = supply. Do the math.......!
Does anybody think that it’s more then likely that it’s not just chinese criminals doing this but the actual Chinese government? This start around the time XI took office I believe and it makes sense from a historical viewpoint.
The opium wars devastated China and now that the west is a threat to China’s rise it makes sense that China would use a tried and true tactic to go after the us, both killing its citizens and raising massive amounts of money for its projects. With the amount of surveillance in China and the control of the internet and all things related to their people, I find it absurd to think that China wouldn’t know who’s behind this massive of a operation.
4
Eliminate human urges to seek alternative drug-induced realities, & suppliers will vanish. Societies and people who have a sense of purpose & compassion & who are educated, safe, & and healthy... both physically and mentally is not an easy task in any culture. But seeking such a world for all to share seems like a very good place to begin. Start with this task where you do have power: vote!
2
Riveting. Well written account of the path of Fentanyl which followed on the heels of pandora’s box the addiction to opioids. From the pill mills has come a demand and , thus America’s search for the next drug dealer. China is filling the void.
3
Stunning article, extremely well written and a wake up call to the US and world about the dangers and obscene profits in drugs.
Seems to me legalizing everything changes nothing except ensuring purity, potency and options for treatment.
Standardized dosing, potency and purity would eliminate a lot of the damage and reduce overdose deaths, as well as curtail the black market, with its profits that fund gangs and violence.
This article should be removed from paywall and open for all to read. Way too important to hide as a subscription only , limiting its reach. I would make it required reading every junior and highschool class nationwide.
9
Wow. Well written expose of how corruption and deceit can be swept under the rug. Kudos to the writer for this well-researched and well explained article. I would give this article an award for best journalism, if it ever came up for a nomination.
9
Alex W. Palmer has written the Pultzer-worthy best investigative article ever.
Your name will go down in history.
11
Those insidious ChiComs poisoning our culture with deadly addictive drugs. Insane. Our problem is the number of people trying to escape reality. That will never change. If it wasn’t fentanyl, there would be another one.
3
"He just got little lost," said Bailey's friend. But why did he get lost?
3
More people have died from Fentanyl abuse than the victims of the Muslim extremists on 9-11. Americans need to stop the military industrial complex and allocate those resources to building the US economy and offering the younger generation something more than video games and empty entertainment. The problem is that the future is bleak for these kids and they have nothing better to do. And if Fentanyl is stopped something else will be developed to take its place.
7
@as Good luck with that. I am sure they will glad to surrender 700 billion annually.
The article's title suggests that blame should be cast on China and insinuates that China is the culprit, which is wrong. When the sourcing shifts to India, would the article title be changed to The India Connection? Stop with the China bashing.
As indicated, fentanyl originated in Europe and proliferated in the USA, commercialized by various parties, with Siegfried providing a simplified synthesis method. It's like developing the atomic bomb and then blaming the country providing the ingredients for the deaths that occurred.
China cooperated but then "The Chinese were furious. Wei Xiaojun, the deputy director general of the narcotics-control bureau at the M.P.S., told reporters, “China regrets that the U.S. chose to unilaterally hold a news conference to announce the hunt for these fugitives.” The release of the information would “impact the ongoing joint investigation into the case.” Wei further claimed that “based on the intelligence and evidence shared” with the M.P.S., there was no reason to conclude that “a large portion” of the illicit fentanyl in the United States had come from China. He also said that China had noted the United States’ failure to thank China for its cooperation on fentanyl cases, despite Rosenstein’s remarks."
Were the Chinese not entitled to be upset when a joint operation is publicly unveiled without a heads up notification?
2
Agent Mike Buemi deserves an award for his incredible work.
8
Really great piece! Captivated from start to finish
5
I see one thing missing in these comments that I commonly see in thousands of other comments to articles in the NYTimes. That is the responsibility of the president for any and all ill that happens during their residence in the White House. The opioid crisis ripened during Obama's term. Where is the outrage and slander against him?
I don't know what his responsibility is but I also don't know how Trump can be blamed for all of societies current ills.
1
I wonder if the Chinese feel less compelled to collaborate with the West because in the 19th century the West caused 10% of Chinese population to be under the influence of opium and other drugs.
3
I can only hope that the “legal” American producers of opioids which have killed thousands are pursued with the same diligence and resourcefulness as in this story. I also hope that one day we treat addicts rather than prosecuting them.
2
@Walker77
Three of those companies were fined $260 million recently. That amount pales in comparison to profits which run in the tens of billions. I think we're going to need to use bigger deterrents.
1
A true horror story to read. More horrifying is the realization that it is true.
5
I really enjoyed the article but feel it provides us with only the «how », not the « why ». I find it disquieting that the victim, Bailey, is described as fitting in so well when he obviously must have been facing a lot of suffering. Did he have to take drugs to maintain his image as a «cool guy »? Why did nobody notice something was wrong? Why did so many kids around him suffer the same fate?
Doing drugs that you know could easily kill you or joining terrorist groups seem to be different expressions of a same disease that is affecting Western youth. Has a desire for self-destruction become more prevalent or has the internet made self-destruction more attainable?
5
Reading this article got me thinking why is that so many people in the “Greastest country of them all” have the need to use drugs? If there was not such a huge demand for drugs in the USA there would not be so many people ready to supply it.
3
@ThiG - Your comment ignores the hard fact that drug addiction ultimately is a *chemical* dependence. The factors that get people started with drugs can be innocuous. When a person is confident and adventurous or curious, or *briefly* despondent and open to trying alternative experiences, that can be their introduction to drugs. After that, character and happiness sometimes don't matter as much as simple chemical feedbacks in the brain. This issue is NOT an ideological issue. It is a physiological issue.
2
Dangerous illegal drugs are always going to be available. I doubt that anyone who starts using believes they'll end up addicted. Alcohol abuse and cigarette smoking declined in the last fifty years because people became convinced of their harmful effects. We need to do a better job of educating people about how easy it is to become addicted and how hard it is to stop, emphasizing the impossibility of knowing what's in the drug you buy. Parents, teachers, and other adults need to be educated about early warning signs of drug use.
5
@Linda - So true! However, this is why the never-ending message must be repeated that one hit is all it takes. Listen to how this kid at the of the article didn't even finish his first hit and he was asking where he could get more. If everybody heeded the danger there, only the suicidal people would be trying drugs. Instead, people can't seem to accept they will not be in control when they try drugs. They must remember that when they try drugs, the drug changes their brain so "they" are no longer "they", but some new drug user who may be hooked until death.
2
Our arrogance has led to other countries succeeding in weakening US from within, and the wealth of the drug sales is connected to sources untouched by laws that govern the less “fortunate”.
On two separate occasions I have lost 2 sons because of fentanyl and fentanyl laced materials. The law enforcement agencies at street level are less than motivated to curb this problem because their kids aren’t dying. The kids that are dying are useless members of society. Not anymore. One time users and intelligent people are falling prey.
As the trooper with the BCI and I discussed how it is next to impossible for the source to be found, it is the little people that want their fix, not the “kingpin” distributor that get nailed.
I read this story and was elated and disappointed because of the impossible notion we can get a handle on it. Other countries have a grasp on help and support but not in the US, and we have to figure it out before our mutual destruction. Thank you for a beautiful piece of journalism.
4
Every Chinese schoolchild is raised on stories of the "great humiliation," a reference to the UK's vast opium trade in China in the 19th and early 20th century.
The communist revolution was partly inspired by widespread opium addiction in China, which Mao largely extinguished by brutal extermination of dealers and users, plus closing ports to western traders.
China has not forgotten or forgiven what western opium merchants inflicted on their nation and we are now reaping the whirlwind.
3
Fabulous story.
China is interesting. China seems to be a place where the worst American impulses seemed to be magnified. The corruption, the endless layers of fake and shell companies, the unaccountability, the ravenous craving for profit at any expense. And all of it is justified because the Chinese admire themselves as being more virtuous, more noble, more resilient.
Indeed, America is corrupt and venal. But no more so than other countries. The human condition is universal. When life, a real sober life fails as a lure for successful living, drugs take over. And the human body and mind is powerless to stop it. The craving to be high is just too intense, real life too boring or disappointing.
But these nefarious ends are not the result of imperfect living, a result of ‘liberal thinking’ or democratic ideology. I think it is the result of hopelessness, of being trapped either economically, emotionally, or mentally. And a large share is not knowing a Higher Power. But finding God is extremely difficult, mostly because of ‘defaulting circumstances’ not of our own making.
Regardless, at some point the lure of fentanyl will snare the upper classes in China. Perhaps when Communist Party leaders or family become hooked, only then will they take notice and take some responsibility. But China will never admit to any fault, they are too virtuous.
The larger question is, what can be done to give people a sense of fulfillment or hope, where drugs do not command center stage?
3
The historical irony of China fueling the fentanyl epidemic in the US is mind-boggling. Beginning in the late 1700s, the British flooded China with illegal opium, eventually addicting more than 10 million Chinese. The Emperor pleaded with Queen Victoria to stop the trade, but the queen didn't bother to reply. When the Chinese tried to stop the trade, the result was the Opium Wars. And the result of that was that China was forced to lease Hong Kong to the British... and so the current Hong Kong crisis was born. Opiates have been a problem for centuries... and progress in chemistry has made the problem worse.
8
@ShenBowen
There was an outflow of silver from GB to China. The only way to stem the outflow of silver was to become the drug dealer of the planet. China would only trade in silver.
Lord Maccartney thought the drug trade was reprehensible but "had to follow orders".
Where are the impression leaders, those who these kids take note of, to warn them of the stark dangers of these drugs?
At the end of the movie Chinatown (1974) after Faye Dunaway has been shot and killed, Jake Gittes as he is led away from the scene is advised by one of the detectives, "Forget it Jake, its Chinatown". Opaque and a labyrinthine trail of ghosts. That is China, deep and with a cast of characters who might or might not be the incarnation of evil or just banal opportunists. Who knows?
But now with globalization its not just Chinatown, its Main Street USA that is dealing with this new reality and a drug that people just can't seem to say no to which can be sent in a simple first class envelope from anywhere.
The War on Drugs is and always has been a failure because criminals will always find a way to fill the demand for mind altering drugs. Overdoses are assured no matter how many drug seizures take place. Guess we have to do a better job of educating people to be more vigilant but when crooks can make lethal pills laced with Fentanyl look just like Oxy Contin pills death is always going to be an outcome.
My personal opinion? Legalize all of them and put the dealers out of business. We did it with alcohol, why not all these other drugs? At least people will know what they are getting and how much they are ingesting. In the end I think that is the best we do.
4
My god! Like reading a Robert Ludlum or John le Carré novel!
Incredible investigation and detail...the Dark Web/Deep Web has made this all possible.
As an MD I have prescribed Fentanyl patches and lollipops for patients with unrelenting chronic pain and it’s a wonderful drug. These folks do not overdose. They get no high, just pain relief.
It doesn’t matter if they stop ALL Fentanyl flowing from China as a new designer chemical compound will take its place--just as Heroin and opioids were once the drug of choice.
We need to put a trillion dollars into WHY some folks have an addiction problem! If they made all these drugs perfectly legal and sold them over the counter in Duane Reade most of us would NEVER use them. Opening legal marijuana dispensaries has NOT increased the number of folks who use this weed on a regular basis.
I have access to every drug and it has never crossed my mind to use them. I don’t even drink alcohol as I don’t want anything affecting my decision making and ability to perform procedures! Yet there are many MDs and pharmacists who do get addicted.
I remember working for 6 months in a large county hospital where we had at least one doctor--usually an anesthesiologist overdose and die once a month injecting Ketamine.(They have unlimited access to many drugs without any strict oversight).
WHY do some folks have addiction not just run, but gallop through families? My late spouse’s family has no one alive due to overdoses!
That’s our MOON SHOT!
6
@Nuschler
Addiction is a physiologic problem that doesn't afflict everyone who tries drugs. That's why taking certain drugs, including alcohol, is a form of Russian roulette -- if you are susceptible, one hit will take your entire life down. The guy standing next to you might go on to use recreationally, or not all.
1
Thank you for an extraordinarily well researched story! Please continue to investigate and report!
4
Like the Chinese I also have a problem sympathizing with this issue. When Heroine and Crack decimated urban communities, where were the concerns of our salt-of-the-earth fellow citizens focused? All I saw was law-and-order rhetoric and actions. Karma and the laws of unintended consequences are interesting.
2
My son died from an overdose three months after Bailey Henke, hundreds of miles away in Kentucky. He had a cocktail of fentanyl, heroin, cocaine and alcohol in his system. Like Bailey's mom, I had never heard of fentanyl. But unlike her, I was never able to get police interested in finding the dealer. My son's cell phone and wallet were missing, so I was just told I maybe I could contact my congressman, to what end I don't know. I am thankful for articles like this that help educate parents as well as law enforcement.
6
Here in San Diego, on Sept. 27, a chemistry professor died of a fentanyl overdose and responding officers found a drug-making lab in his University City apartment (near UCSD) with enough fentanyl and carfentanyl to kill 1.5 million people.
Enough doses to kill 1.5 million! In one apartment!
It is astounding that we humans have created something so toxic.
When I read articles that warn how pure fentanyl is so potent that a dose the size of 3-4 grains of salt can kill, I'm horrified.
Why aren't we seeing more public service announcements, billboard warnings, and news programs to alert young people to this threat? Why is a story about something so dangerous not rising up to the top of every news cycle?
5
Amazing reporting - some of the beset I have read in a long time. Beyond sad.
1
Thank you for this story. Excellent journalism.
3
Thank you for this article. It is a phenomenal explanation of the explosion of this epidemic-where the drug originated, how it jumped from hospitals to the streets. We needed this article desparately. Thank you for this wonderful work!
11
And the kids in HKSAR worry about their future because of the extradition issue when some of its boom has come from of being a shell company haven. Once upon a time, Switzerland but at least it hosted legitimate companies trying to minimize taxes. Just by tightening any illicit activities in the booming HKSAR could cause a lot of economic problems. Then months of protests and riots. Both sides need to reassess the situation before it is too late.
As far as drug interdiction is concerned, the U.S. needs to make this the highest priority, it is more than trade imbalance, on the par with intellectual properties if not more so
1
Rescue breathing should be publicized to young people. Perhaps it should be taught in the schools. People are going to do drugs one way or another and one can survive a Fentanyl overdose if one can maintain a clear airway and oxygenate until the drug wears off. Going through CPR training in school might make kids think twice about even taking these drugs. The case presented here of the boy dying was entirely treatable with rescue breathing but his buddy panicked and did not know what to do.
7
@as
There should be readily available NARCAN (Or whatever the rescue drug is now called) available for addicts and lay people alike. A few days ago we were at a function and some one had one, in a holster, on his belt. I don't know why, but I felt it was a good idea, much like we keep EpiPens on hand for our several severely allergic family members.
Ironically, people in my family are allergic.to one or more of the "carrying agents" used when fentanyl is given as anesthesia. Yet, even in medical offices, we often run Into people who have no idea what we are.talking about, or how.to spell it.
4
@as you are so right
Solid research/report story. The only way to stop/drastically reduce fentanyl and other killing drug use in the US is a major multi-level cultural change among youth that treats addiction as a medical problem, links it with mental health and does not stigmatize addiction. Do we talk about coddling diabetic or heart patients? It takes serious courage to openly admit drug dependence /addiction and serious resources to successfully triumph over it. So yes, definitely go after the fentanyl kingpins. But as long as there is demand and huge profits to be made, kingpins and cartels will find new ways to meet that demand.
7
@Paul from Oakland The solution is not about addiction or mental health. Instead, the question is: what is it in their lives that pushes people to do drugs? Is there a way to improve life so people either never take drugs or manage to use non-lethal substances in a way that does not harm them or those around them? That even enhances life, or creativity? You have to look at the society, the culture and the overriding economy to understand causation. You also have to understand that getting high is a feature of many cultures, past and present, that animals also get high. So the basic issue is why are people harming themselves and those around them when they get high? In the case of opioids, the question is: where is the pain? What is all this pain about? Some of it is bodily pain, no doubt. But that does not explain an epidemic. Another question is, what explains the callousness of the dealer? I believe it is vital to ask the right questions. Mine may not be the best ones. So, which are?
6
@pedroshaio, @Paul from Oakland
I think both of you are missing the point. People try drugs for all sorts of reasons. Sure, sometimes it is because someone is depressed or has some mental health issue playing out. Just as often, though, the reason is as simple as curiosity, boredom, or wanting to be accepted by one's friends. The vast majority of these overdoses are NOT people who set out to intentionally harm themselves.
Part of the problem in getting the message out there, in this country, at least, is that our drug education efforts have historically been, well, not entirely honest. Kids are bombarded very early on with propaganda about recreational drug use that mostly fails to make any distinctions between any illicit drugs. When drug education programs teach kids that marijuana carries the same risks for addiction and overdose as heroin, and then a kid eventually smokes a joint someplace and realizes the world didn't end and he isn't in an alley shooting up heroin, what do you think that does to that kid's trust in drug education efforts as a whole?
We need drug education that is open and honest about both the risks and the perceived rewards of each substance on an individual basis, and to stop treating all non-medical drug use as if it is equally dangerous.
6
@Mark Kessinger But we agree entirely.
We now have the means to detect, with muons, the presence of nuclear bomb materials. We need the ability to detect drugs in the same shipments. I fully realize this will slow down the transport of materials from China, or Mexico, or Canada, or wherever. But it is way past the time for action. Negotiating with the Chinese is fruitless. We are in an economic war with China, and they are even less moral than our POTUS.
11
Incredible reporting. This crucial information should be distributed to high schools and colleges nationwide. It’s time.
23
This is a riveting piece of journalism. Thank you.
I think that it is very noteworthy that in the case of Bailey Henke (as reported), there is no direct link to the over-prescription of legitimate opioids. Pot and heroin are mentioned, but there’s no report of an injury or illness that resulted in a prescription that then spiraled out of control.
14
@MB This is a point I make often to my friends. In detox centers and rehab facilities, maybe two of ten patients is still abusing prescription drugs. Maybe one or two more out of the same ten was introduced to the drugs by prescription but continue on with street purchases.
The rest are like Baily Henke, opioids are the entrees in the recreational drug buffet that becomes the drug of choice.
Here in Texas we are doing stupid and ineffectual rule makings for doctors and pharmacies that deprive many sufferers of the relief they seek. We do things like mandate that prescriptions for opioids be written on a different color paper than for non-controlled drugs. Sounds like something the TSA might dream up. Meanwhile, China has 250,000 labs making and shipping tons of fentanyl here each month.
Pain kills just like fentanyl, it just takes longer.
1
Really well-researched reporting here. This article hit home for me. I'm in college and two juniors at my old high school, one the brother of someone I know, the other a friend of a friend, died of fentanyl overdoses in the past 2 months. They were seeking oxycodone pills but received a pill laced with fentanyl, as described in this article. They didn't stand a chance. A subsequent police investigation found many of these pills in circulation among dealers in the area, but they're yet to find the source. The drug epidemic has hit Seattle hard, just as it has all over the country. You never think it'll happen where you live, or to people you know, and it slaps you in the face when it does. A few years ago, when I was in high school, someone else I knew overdosed, not sure on what, but he came and went just like that. I saw these substances slowly seep into my community. No one talks about them. No one acknowledges them. But they're there in the dark underbelly of an otherwise seemingly nice, upstanding community, and the price of this wilful ignorance is more sudden grief. I can only hope the people responsible for this plague are brought to justice for the countless lives they've destroyed. And I pray that our communities can be less punitive and more understanding, so our neighbors may find the help that they need. It's a long road to recovery for our nation.
32
What an extraordinary piece of reporting! This is why I subscribe.
43
Buemi, your tireless journey to find the sources of this terrible drug is incredible. No doubt, a movie will be made of this trek and when awards come out, know that there are millions from beyond, clapping in appreciation of your persistence. We are all grateful of your work. Thank you.
42
4500 people (26% 30-39 years of age) died in Canada due to fentanyl overdose in 2018 (Govt of Canada Health stats), per capita higher than in the US. Canadian authorities have traced most fentanyl to sources in China. Canada now has many supervised consumption sites, with naloxone available to treat opioid overdose; not a solution, but better than people dying in an alley. Yes, the causes of addiction are fundamental to address, but so is the open supply from overseas.
29
How come they were able to stop production of methaqualone (qualudes) in the ‘70s because a few people died? But now many thousands of people die from fentanyl, yet those with chronic pain are the ones that get shut down. If qualudes were around today they would never have been able to shut down production in the us and Europe as they did in the 70s. Instead we have fentanyl killing more people and it won’t be stopped due to $$$$$.
7
@cat lover
Go back and read the story completely. Quaaludes (methaqualone) were tablets made in a pharmaceutical lab requiring strict standards. It was a complicated organic compound and needed binding substances etc to make it a a tablet. So it was easy to shut them down. Which was too bad as it was a great hypnotic/sedative--safe sleeping pill.
The fentanyl and its multiple analogues are just a powder EASILY made in a home lab. That’s why meth is so out of control and we will ALWAYS have meth as anyone can make it in a home lab! Cheap and very easy to get. 80% of the patients at Hawai’i State Mental Hospital are addicted to meth along with severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. There were meth labs everywhere in the islands.
The powdered fentanyl referred to in this study is so concentrated that the amount equal in weight to just ONE quaalude tablet could cause 30 overdose deaths! Worth $80K to the dealer.
So re-read the article as it fully explains just how easy it is to make all the different types of fentanyl powder PLUS since just a few micrograms is needed for each dose it’s very easy to just send it in the mail.
Pharmaceutical tablets such as quaaludes.oxycontin, hydromorphone are hard to get in great quantities AND they’re expensive! One 20mg Oxycontin tab can sell for $20 on the street! $20 of powdered fentanyl can be delivered in a small bubble postal envelope and would NEVER be detected, be diluted down and sold to hundreds of folks.
2
@cat lover
The European governments responded to a crisis that was putting lives at risk. The Chinese don't care, as long as the money rolls in, the lives are foreign, and it's happening in other countries. Asia is awash in meth and other drugs that originate there, but those governments are loathe to admit that drug problems exist, so nothing changes.
@cat lover
retired federal attorney F/70
"How come" we cannot stop all things evil and dangerous now versus the '70s? The Internet shares all with zero accountability. My favorite illustration this week is Z's adamant insistence that known-to-be-untrue statements included in "political speech" will be published by FaceBook.
Always all ways follow the money.
3
China is purposely flooding the US with fentanyl as payback for the Opium War. Chinese media is constantly running stories about the Opium war and how the West hooked thousands of Chinese on Opium. Think Xi doesn’t know about this or can’t control this? He is likely the one directly in charge of this. Xi is a student of history and wouldn’t miss a chance to get even with the West.
31
@Winnie the Pooh Must Go. I don't know about the involvement of Xi, but for sure the West caused up to 10% of Chinese population to be addicted, in the name of free trade. The British gained control of Hong Kong which was then used as a base for drug trafficking. This is mentioned in Sapiens, a Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Harari, and detailed in Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy, by Carl Trocki. So the people in China involved in drug trafficking or with knowledge of it, must feel less moral pressure to relent or pursue it.
3
@Winnie the Pooh Must Go: Yeah, sure, just as China is flooding the US with cheap clothing, shoes, electronics and stuff.
Unlike the British Opium war, China is not using force to make Americans buy fentanyl. Rather it is American and Canadian distributors sourcing the stuff from China. And China has agreed to ban the stuff.
So stop with the China bashing and fear mongering. Solve the US demand problem. If US can legalize cannabis then why blame other countries for a fentanyl problem.
1
@Winnie the Pooh Must Go Except that the US was never involved in the Opium War. That was all the British. So are all westerners the same?
If anyone has any doubt that we're under attack by the Chinese this article is further evidence. They will not have to invade us to succeed. They're probing our cyber weaknesses on a ongoing, "persistent" basis (as we know from previous, credible reporting) and this article is simply another example of their blatant attempts to undermine our country in every way possible. Russia is scary in their own blundering, obvious way but the subtle Chinese efforts should really have everyone's attention
51
Undoubtedly U.S. should be on high alert regards to what is detrimental to our society. But fearful of foreign government, be it China, Russia or other countries that you hear so much spinning, reduced the responsibilities we ourselves started and have failed to prevent. Due to profit that benefited pockets of many layers of industries, the U.S. has been slow to target it's own internally created problems that started this downward spiraling. When big U.S. based pharmas pushed oxycontin that created the opioid crisis where patients now needed higher dose of pain reliever, why haven't more advocate to stop the nonsense of pervasive attack that eventually led us down this rabbit hole? Bringing up fear of outsiders without taking personal responsibilities never ends a phenomenon, it will just perpetuate and raise other problems and issues.
@Mark
The root of the problem is the failure to educate young people in USA about not taking drug and the failure of the USA government in punishing drug users and drug dealers.
No one is forcing the drug users mentioned in the artilec to take drugs. They voluntarily assumed the risk by deciding to take drugs.
@Mark
OMG! We are NOT under attack! It’s not as if China is producing sarin gas and transporting it to innocent Americans!
They’re producing a drug that gets ppl high! And Americans are looking everywhere for drugs to party down!
Don’t blame the Chinese!
Do you know what drug causes EIGHT MILLION deaths per year in the world? Tobacco!! More than 7 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 1.2 million are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke. Around 80% of the world's 1.1 billion smokers live in low- and middle-income countries.Jul 26, 2019
Tobacco - World Health Organization
480,000 die right here in the good ole USA! 64% of Americans used to smoke..now it’s down into the low teens.
So the tobacco companies needed more smokers and they sent them to the rest of the world!
But NOTHING IS DONE! The number of fentanyl, heroin, and oxycontin deaths will NEVER come close to the deaths from tobacco. Yet it’s LEGAL.
Forget about China sending fentanyl. The US tobacco companies are killing millions globally.
So before condemning China--let’s look in the mirror. We sell two of the most deadly drugs in the world--legally. Tobacco and alcohol. We’re outsourcing cancer, liver destruction, and deadly lung diseases like emphysema.
So tell me WHY we aren’t castigated in a news story? We’re hypocrites.
We sell an even deadlier device--guns. 300,000 guns are illegally purchased via straw buyers/yr to other countries!
3
Extraordinary piece of journalism by Palmer and amazing work—his tenacity in the face of such obstacles!—by DEA agent Buemi. Their good work will surely help prevent more innocent deaths and, for that, the whole nation is in their debt.
33
Brilliant reporting. A+.
33
'Chinese officials have claimed that the United States’ problem is “liberalism,” because “some people link drug consumption with freedom, individuality and liberation.”'
And they're right. Drug use is tolerated in this country. My state passed Prop 47 five years ago. Reclassified many crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. Including drug offenses. Can't keep criminals in jail. Put the blame where it belongs. On the users. If these people were not abusing fentanyl, it wouldn't be coming here.
11
@sheikyerbouti If drug dealers weren't making money out of selling their product they wouldn't produce it.
Sales need to be controlled, in that way the government can control the use and collect taxes as well.
6
Sounds pretty much backward to me.
@sheikyerbouti I’m glad at least one other reader shares my viewpoint. The chorus of voices that impart no guilt whatsoever to the dope addicts is frightening. Has personal responsibility and accountability for one’s wrongful acts become that devalued in America? No wonder we have a drug addiction crisis.
3
If it was USA shipping illegal drugs into China, China would stop it immediately and easily. China could just as easily stop the export and manufacturer of illegal drugs but they don’t want to. They do prevent it from being sold inside China. China has absolute control over everything and know what everyone is doing in detail. It’s impossible that they don’t know. If USA bans all China exports into USA and globally until China stops the drug sales that would solve the problem.
15
@Stephen Gergely Except India, Mexico, and any other country with chemically-savvy production sites and no concern for anything other than profit would step right up and fill the void.
17
@Stephen Gergely
The last time China banned opium and destroyed opium found within China lead to UK start a war to sell opium. If USA took tough measure against drug dealers and drug users within USA, everyone will applause the right decision taken by USA. From the article, the drug trade are basically a willing buyer and willing seller basis thus it is for the USA to be tough on their own young people. Educate the young people in USA that the so called freedom in the does not include die by overdose on illicit drugs.
@Stephen Gergely Did you read the part in the article that stated "China has drug abuse issues of its own, especially involving meth, heroin and ketamine."?
Just an aside... a fentanyl patch costs $300-$400?! Here they cost US$19 - for a box of five. And that's not the price that the government pharmaceutical benefits scheme has negotiated, that's just what they cost.
13
@Pete
I believe this is a "street price", and they were abused and killed some when they licked the skin drug delivery side to get high.
The pain treated and the elderly here are often preyed upon drug dealers, seeking their oxy or other drugs. Reporting this to cops got us-- nowhere.
Fentanyl producers are supply meeting the demand. To the extent that they foster the "deaths of despair" of working class whites, who are klump supporters, they are heroes.
2
Mike Buemi is a REAL HERO!!!!!
Mike, if you read this. what can we all say, but thank you for your dedication.
43
Thanks to Netflix I’ve seen Breaking Bad, Orange Is The New Black and now Blacklist so this tragic story nor none others like them shock me anymore. Kudos to those who have the patience to stay with and write them however.
7
Legalizing, regulating and taxing all drugs is the only solution that will stop this - just like the repeal of alcohol prohibition.
9
The U.S. needs to institute financial controls that prevent things like people making fortunes from chemicals banned in the U.S. Those ill-gotten gains are not only killing Americans, they are being parked in American real estate and shell companies (adding to the homelessness problem, as ordinary workers can't compete for homes with all-cash foreign buyers). Follow the money and confiscate it to hit them where it hurts.
13
@Sara The problem there is the product is secreted in to the USA and therefore extremely difficult to regulate.
In Canada, and I suspect in the US too, the fentanyl epidemic came only after the government cracked down on 'diversion' of prescription opioids. Sometimes it is hard to separate cause from effect.
5
It’s easy to feel helpless after reading this superb bit of journalism. (I could feel the investigating agent’s fatigue while reading it!) The story reminds me of how powerless we all are under the influence.
That powerlessness goes even further when tracing the drug’s delivery system, the endless hours of investigation, and the heart-stricken parents of the users.
As much as I liked the article and the author’s work, I also was proud to be American (which doesn’t always happen these days..) when learning the tenacious work of our government employees.
33
@Sheela Todd We're not helpless, but it's not interdiction that is going to get us out of this mess! How many more generations of this futile, unenforceable prohibition do we have to endure?
3
A riveting powerful sad story. The overdose was such a tragedy that has repeated itself tens of thousands of times. Shell companies seem to be a common denominator in so many types of crimes these days. The ease that they afford people to move drugs and money, shelter assets under a cloak of anonymity, I would think strict regulation should be a top priority for the USA and most of the worlds developed nations. For the countries that disagree and drag their feet in adopting regulations (caymans, Seychelles,etc) they should be punished with crippling sanctions, they should be treated like global pariahs, with their banks cut off from the rest of the world. People should not be able to move vast amounts of money around the globe from one shell company to another, laundering it and turning it into a beautiful condo with views of Central Park. I watched a great movie last night, "The Laundromat" that was about just this.
37
@Joseph
Some of those launderers will need to find new ways to stash their cash, as New York is instituting limits on vacant real estate. Hopefully the off-shore trillions will go into yachts and the homes in our cities can once again be inhabited by residents who need them and perhaps reduce the population of people without homes.
1
It's a shame that this incredible piece of journalism isn't awarded a higher profile in the NYT!
53
@gelendwagen
I smoke fentanyl ALL THE TIME and I can stop anytime I want to !!!
Amazing piece of journalism, NYT
26
Such a great job! This longread is truly worth the time spent on it. Amazing journalism.
Huge respect to the D.E.A agent Buemi.
48
Amazing journalism!
21
Absolutely brilliant reporting! Continues to confirm my beliefs about the Chinese totalitarian regime. They have no sense of decency. None.
29
@Douglas Ritter Undoubtedly U.S. should be on high alert regards to what is detrimental to our society. But fearful of foreign government, be it China or other countries that you hear so much political spinning, reduced the responsibilities we ourselves started and have failed to prevent. Due to profit that benefited pockets of many layers of industries, the U.S. has been slow to target it's own internally created problems that started this downward spiraling. When big U.S. based pharmas pushed oxycontin that created the opioid crisis where patients now needed higher dose of pain reliever, why haven't more advocate to stop the nonsense of pervasive attack that eventually led us down this rabbit hole? Where is the decency in that? Bringing up fear of outsiders without taking personal responsibilities never ends a phenomenon, it will just perpetuate and raise other problems and issues.
Yeah! At least here in America we have the decency to lock up our addicts instead of wasting good tax payer money in treating them.
Thanks fro Laura for her strength as a mother to allow Bailey's death relevance. And to the millions of other families that have been impacted by this greedy epidemic.
17
It will never be known how many lives (mostly young people's) D.E.A. agent Mike Buemi saved with his single-minded devotion. He is a natural sleuth with extraordinary morals. These mostly kids do not understand the potency of Fentenyal and do not deserve to die from it as another commentator wrote. People make more mistakes when young through lack of judgement and having their lives snuffed out is way too high a price. Glad to see Ron Rosenstein did his part, this time.
33
Yes, Mr. Palmer will win a Pulitzer for this article.
Let this serve as an inspiration and an example to journalists everywhere.
I guess I'll keep renewing my subscription to the New York Times. Thanks.
29
How sad, but happy for the investigative DEA agent, he prevented many deaths
12
The astonishing fact, after reading through this lengthy, excellently researched article, is that "the ghost in the darkness," the titular Chinese "key man," Zhang Jian, while indicted in the U.S. was only briefly arrested in China and then released, and the named Chinese company itself, Zaron Bio-tech, listed as the supplier and/or manufacturer of 1,000's of kilograms of fentanyl, can neither be found nor located in Hong Kong or China! Like ghosts, the entire complex apparatus seems to have vanished in the mist.
"Forget about it, Jake -- It's Chinatown."
31
A quick google search on the history of the opium wars shows that they were primarily fought between China and England and France.
Many writers have said that Fentanyl is revenge for the opium wars. Unlikely.
6
@meril-jean price Lots of Brits and key Americans accumulated enormous wealth by force-feeding 19th century China with opium.
While America didn't engage in direct combat, plenty of Americans got rich as international drug pushers.
Key among them was FDR's grandfather, Warren Delano, who later said he could not defend his opium enterprise on moral grounds. But he insisted his efforts in addicting several generations of Chinese were grounded in good 19th century international business practices.
Little wonder 21st-century China all but ignores Western complaints about illegal Chinese drug exports.
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/28/opinion/the-opium-war-s-secret-history.html
15
@loulor Important to remember that opium addiction, especially through laudanum, was a very big problem in the US in the 2nd half of the 19th century too. Heroin was created as an "antidote" to opiates used in the 1800s and early 1900s
6
@meril-jean price
Many established American families like Astor (John Jacob Astor) and Forbes (John Murray Forbes) have built their fortune from running drug/opium into Imperial Ching Dynasty controlled China.
The Astors and Forbes are drug smugglers but UK started a war to sell opium in the name of free trade.
How about restricting overseas incoming mail mailing rights to selected companies with quotas. If the company ships mail with illegal substances, they loose their quota. That way, those companies will have incentive to prevent illegal shipments.
For large legitimate companies making electronic components this won't be a burden, as they are well known and can be given their own quotas.
But knick knack operations will have to forward though a designated (e.g. Chinese or Indian) shipping company which will charge a fee for doing the inspection work and background check. And if something does slip though, that company can be held responsible for the prosecution of the actual criminals, i.e. somebody to push for prosecution on the (e.g. Chinese or Indian) side.
Knick knacks will get more expensive, but that would create more opportunity for US knick knack makers, who have long complained of being undercut and having their designs stolen anyway.
13
@Craig H. A
Complain to Congress who made the US Postal System impotent and insolvent. They made the packages of knick knacks ship for far LESS f4om China, than a comparable package from, say, NY to CA ships for. China Post ships to the detriment of US shippers, which has added to the huge uptick in shipments coming in. Some of this is eBay and Amazon and Ali Baba. Some of it is anonymous shippers sending drugs. In the case of drugs, few price raises would stop it. But better inspection and interdiction would.
1
This article shares so many similarities to a book I read recently called The Snakehead - by Patrick Keefe, but instead of drugs it was human trafficking.
Both fascinating. Highly recommend.
2
Incredible story! Thanks for publishing!
6
Such a brilliant piece of journalism. Thank You!
7
Thank you for great journalism!
7
When are people going to figure out that China is not our friend? Not our trading "partner."
21
Global gov't debt and retirement plan underfunding are both at all time highs and pushing simultaneous growth of hidden identity through island tax havens and cryptocurrencies.... Black market fentanyl is a symptom of the many man-made crises stalking us as money moves through the shadows of greed.
11
Two small things that I took as encouraging:
1. Trump administration is adamant about acknowledging and fighting this - hold China to task. It’s good to know that the admin isn’t ALL bad.
2. Upon request, American pharmaceutical companies devoted their resources to help the DEA investigate the fentanyl epidemic (and they couldn’t go around bragging about it).
I’m not trying to flop anyone’s opinions about either one way or another, but part of intellectual honesty is acknowledging when something is a positive.
18
@Simple trump enacts a policy but he doesn't follow thru. he thinks it's a one time prescription. he is an episodic leader.
11
@Simple a broken clock is right twice a day.
11
This article is spot on. But again, the NYT, a paper I love, has overlooked the legitimate use of fentanyl for breakthrough pain. The legal fentanyl, which comes as white lollipops or as patches, is clearly labeled as not to be taken unless the patient is taking a lower level opiate such a methadone (used to be Percocet). An opiate has to already be circulating in the blood in order not to overdose or die. Of course people who use illegal fentanyl such as the powdered concoctions from China are not going to be aware of this.
I took fentanyl in lollipop form, along with methadone, for a decade for very severe pain resulting from a serious of botched breast cancer reconstruction surgeries. My doctor was in the physical medicine department of the University of Pennsylvania. It was the only medication that made my life bearable. The only side effect was fatigue. When the DEA cracked down I was able to withdraw on my own. But even with a weaker pain killer (oxycodone) I was in unbearable pain. I never considered nor did my doctors that I was an addict. I didn’t take the meds to get high but to alleviate pain. I now take Subutex, not for cravings but for the modicum of pain relief it provides. I am still in great pain (it’s permanent neuropathic pain plus exquisite muscle spasms) and my life is essentially over because no other medications work.
If this is too long, please consider printing the first paragraph. This is the fourth time I have written about on the subject.
33
@Deborah A Perloe
Yes Deb. It is shame more MDs are not skilled in pain management ( as if it is some sacred art ) nor pain medication withdrawl ( which is truly a difficult, intense, and poorly understood subject among Mds.)
I too, suffered from, and still do, intense pain from a climbing accident in 1974. I came to realize the medical community is punishing those truly in need of pain relief because of the criminality of some ( a lot ) of drug abusers. I feel for you; I really do. Medical Pain Management is not magic; it certainly shouldn't be a crime!!!!!! Doctor heal Thy Self!!!
7
The report goes in depth. I still have a few paragraphs to go.
The Chinese Authorities part sounds so true to me. Each time when I mentioned how bureaucratic China Authorities are, people would always say "our country is same". Well, that is because you have no idea what level of bureaucratic I was talking about.
Thanks to the preserving work Buemi has done. While I was reading, I was also astonished that how many young people have no goals of life, and risk their life for temporary pleasure. What can we do to help at this end? Because even one day there would be drug free world, it would change the fact that they feel helpless and meaningless, and that it is fatal.
35
@Ying Tang
For starters, we can decide to move away from ruthless capitalism, and also the creeping neofeudalism that stalks the U.S.
Realize our kids are growing up with high stakes tests to get them into colleges that load them up with semi-permanent debt, shooter drills, and ever-fewer jobs that can sustain families. We've decided that people who perform "low-skilled" work don't deserve to live dignified lives. Oh, and the planet is swiftly approaching the point of no return and will be uninhabitable, perhaps in their lifetimes. It's a lot.
1
Excellent article and investigative reporting. I was riveted.
15
@BlackJackJacques I totally agree..another excellent article in the NYT
4
An excellent article. to be sure; well written and researched.
Two semi-random thoughts.
First, if these drugs were legal, would the regulation of dosages and purity actually save lives by allowing people to know how much of what they were taking, much like the revocation of Prohibition got rid of the health issues of bathtub gin?
Second, if Facebook et al are held responsible for the messages users post and the results of them, should the various Post Offices who accept drugs and ship them be held responsible for the deaths caused by those drugs
7
@michaelscody
I didn't realize that Facebook was held responsible for the messages users post. This is new to me, how does this work and what happens to Facebook when this happens?
2
@Vail
To be more correct, I should have said "is to be held responsible". There have been numerous proposals to either make them liable for the reactions to user's posts or to break them up because they are not.
1
Not to take away from the tragedy of Bailey's death and the fentanyl epidemic as a whole, but this underscores how wrongheaded drug testing is; if fentanyl eludes testing but poppy seeds come up as a dangerous narcotic, we may be disqualifying some qualified job applicants on a technicality.
18
The underlying problems of Fentanyl are American - the Chinese poem got that right. We keep blowing billions on DEAs, police and criminalization, but refuse to invest in the things that would actually help people and prevent most from taking Fentanyl to begin with. We need to start by getting Americans universal health care so they don't end up self medicating on pharma because they can't avoid real treatment. Second, invest in serious and affordable rehabilitation facilities. Third, invest in employment and learning opportunities and job training for people in many of these remote communities to have something to go to and be proud of to help them have economics opportunity. These three things will do more than any chasing Chinese dealers ever will - globalization means that Fentanyl can be made in a dozen other countries and shutting it down via cutting the supply network like traditional narcotics is extremely unlikely to succeed.
100
Thank you for this well written, clear documentation, of complex multidimensional processes, outcomes and agendaed as well as random individual and systemic stakeholders.
The broad dimensions of this article are a much needed caveat about the all too misleading brief “mantras” about:
big Pharm as THE...
the numbers of deaths from opioid ODs,
about the opioid “epidemic” in a divided nation of diverse people,
led by personally unaccountable policymakers. At ALL levels,
the “Drugs” of enabled incivility. Mutual mistrust. Mutual disrespect.
Thank you!
4
This is a book - for certain. Maybe, even a film. Undeniably, awesome journalism.
101
I just finished Westoff book, fentanyl, Inc
extremely important book, and I thought this was just a review. kudos to all involved in this story.brave reporting.thank you nyt
30
Excellent article, well done.
18
If China is just getting back at Britain, why doesn’t it just smuggle it to England instead of all over Europe and the West? The US wasn’t involved in the opium wars. Neither was Germany or Spain. If the West attacked all of Eastern Asia because of a grievance with Japan, people would call this racist. But the western media, will never call out other societies for racism for fear of being called racists. Take Myanmar as an example. The real problem with the genocide against the Rohingya by the Asian majority is not so much a problem with Islam as a problem with race and culture. The attacks on the Rohingyas are primarily racist attacks, not anti-Islam sentiment but you won’t hear the West identify it this way.
Clearly this is not just about grievance for the Chinese Dictatorship. It’s about attacking all of western society, creating chaos and a desire for world domination. Whatever the reason, it’s evil. And it sources back to the Chinese Dictatorship which supports and encourages this trade. People do not realize how deadly the Chinese Dictatorship is. It is 1984 on steroids. It has murdered more people than Hitler and Stalin combined. It has concentration camps where people are not only “re-educated” but tortured and executed. It’s worse than Hitler and Stalin because, unlike those regimes which perished, it has been able to survive through decades and now has the advantage of computers and tracks everyone.
46
@DSD
USA businesses class such as Astor and Forbes built their fortune through running opium to China.
Yes, USA did not participate in the opium war to force Imperial China to buy drugs but before the start of opium war, there were no shortage of opium smugglers from USA competing with British East Indian Company for drug money.
USA should enact strict laws for drug use and not to decriminalize drug use. From the article, drug users in USA were not forced to use the drugs or buy the drugs, they voluntarily consume the drugs and purchase the drugs on willing buyer and willing seller basis.
Oh my. Please notify the DEA agents who have been stalking me and my pain doctor for years.
13
I have to agree. While administration of opioids must be carefully monitored, such drugs do have a legitimate role in medicine. There are people who genuinely suffer from chronic, excrutiating, and sometimes incurable pain, for which opioids can provide some relief and allow at least a tolerable existence, when no other class of drugs will. For the sake of those genuinely suffer such pain, please do not throw the baby out with the bath water.
14
Fantastic article and great investigative reporting. The rapidly rising housing prices in Vancouver, and the explosion of luxury vehicles are due to fentanyl producers in China parking their money in Vancouver. The luxury lifestyle that Chinese expatriates enjoy in Vancouver is literally on the backs of overdosed Americans. Chilling.
74
@Raphael You have connected the dots in a way that other responders have not. The story is truly about the full circle of international capitalism at its best. Why would any trade negotiations from China's view, want to stop this incredible flow of monty to itself?
14
@Raphael - wow that is crazy
3
@Raphael how do you know their money is from fentanyl and not a million other profitable businesses?
10
Wonder where the name Fentanyl came from? Drug names are often coined by ad agencies as marketing blurbs. Or, they can be reshaping of their chemical ingredients.
2
Can you imagine how much can be done about these and the many, many more issues that our government could help with if it was functional in D.C.?
21
In a dark way, the Chinese would call this poetic justice, after the 100 years of humiliation and the opium wars. But of course our own pharma did most of the work.
2
@Bobb
We must legalize all fentanyl analogs. I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a pre-frontal lobotomy !!!!!!
1
This is tragic and decimating our youngest adults. Insidious and deadly. Fentanyl is used by anesthesiologists in a surgical setting. And unfortunately not new news. In the Blockchain.
6
I have no doubt that the Chinese manufacture and distribution of drugs is state sponsored. One more way to try to usurp the U.S. and other nations. Trump can't sanction or penalize the Chinese government enough.
27
I await a story that acknowledges that addiction doesn’t happen in a vacuum, that people who become addicted have had addiction modeled for them by those closest to them, and that un-remedied trauma leads them to using substances to numb themselves to trauma.
Too many times The Times writes about addiction as if it sprang full blown from the head of Zeus. This orientation in its reporting is too often present in stories about white people who become addicted to heroin, fentanyl or propanol.
There is a wealth of social science research that Times reporters could access if they only had the will and that would explain addiction’s origins and allow them to them to find (and report) these indicia in these individual stories. I suppose The Times doesn’t do that because that would remove the sense its stories create that addiction can happen to anyone without warning, even though that isn’t altogether true.
In failing to report the more complicated origins of addiction, and acknowledge the role that trauma plays in allowing the vulnerable to become addicted, The Times allows readers to skip over these stories, the origins of addictive behavior, and the emotional trauma that lays the vulnerable open to addiction.
If The Times wants to do us all a service in showing how addiction has now ensnared middle class Anglos, its writers could do so with reporting more informed by social science research. I await that day.
35
Agreed; however, this article was published to explore the possibility of a state funded attack on our country via fentanyl shipments. There are other times for the types of articles you are speaking of.
22
@Houstonian
Very well put, and I couldn't agree more with you. Thank you for your comment.
5
@Houstonian This information is all available on NIDA's site - reports are more technical but their research has identified the four factors that make it more likely than not a person will be predisposed to addiction - and childhood trauma - especially if untreated is one of them. See www.drugabuse.gov
But Trump only gave lip service to providing funding for evidence based treatment that has the best outcomes - the recommendations of his Committee were in line with the ground breaking report and plan from the Surgeon General to Obama in 2016 [Facing Addiction in USA] which led to the Obama's CARA Act that was passed by both houses in August 2016 but never properly implemented as only a small amount of the approved funding was appropriated due to the election - but Trump won and started to build more prisons and appointed Sessions who prefered to lock up addicts as criminals and not treat the illness.
As a result US OD deaths (which have been reduced with the availability of Narcan) continue to rise steadily from 20.4K in 1999 to over 70K in 2017 and it will continue unless CARA is funded to focus and the budget applied to demand reduction (treatment). No chance as this was Obama's bill. Trump's tearing down all Obama policies so there's nothing left that would be an Obama accomplishment and not his. In 2017, 78% of ODs were whites, 12% black, 8% Hispanic.
14
I can’t get over the author describing Molly the way they did. Molly usually refers to MDMA. These NPSs sound like research chemicals, such as 2c-b, or synthetic THC like K-2.
Completely pulled me out of the story
7
This kind of reminds me of the NBA debacle. "We support Hong Kong!" "WHAT? No more NBA in China!". Whoa, wait a minute, we make a lot of money in China. "You misunderstood me, I said, 'Forget Hong Kong!'". Can I have my paycheck please? Now we have the Fentanyl deal, that's what is causing the majority of the overdose deaths, a painkiller that is 80-100 times stronger than the real opioids. It is coming in in 55 gallon drums, containers full of them. Through the mail. Through shipping companies. But nothing is being done, other than making it harder for patients to get them here. China doesn't care how many of us die.
29
The underlying problem is that we are repeating the mistake of prohibition, which is to treat drug abuse as a criminal rather than medical problem.
The Nixon Administration launched the War on Drugs against marijuana. This led drug dealers to shift from marijuana, which was bulky, cheap and difficult to smuggle, to easier, more profitable drugs like heroin, cocaine and amphetamines, and now fentanyl.
The War on Drugs had literally unlimited resources, of money and law. It gave us the largest prison population in the world, and the effect on the black population and civil liberties, such as New York's stop and frisk laws, has been devastating.
The criminal approach has turned illegal drugs from a manageable nuisance with fewer deaths than alcohol or tobacco, into a major public health problem with >70,000 deaths a year.
The solution is to read the medical journals and follow what they call "evidence-based therapy," which for opioids is basically needle exchange programs, naloxone, long-term buprenorphine -- and recognizing that abstinence-based counseling produces more deaths. https://www.nejm.org/medical-research/addiction
I knew Herbert Klieber, whose NYT obituary is worth rereading https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/obituaries/herbert-d-kleber-dead.html particularly about "evidence-based medicine." He told me that he changed his position on needle exchanges because the evidence proved him wrong. That's a lesson in scientific integrity.
38
It’s amazing how we can humanize addiction. Sorry got no sympathy put them jail and ruin their lives. Good people don’t do drugs.
5
@Mari Johnson
I am sorry to say this is a tragic misperception of the breadth and diversity of drug use and its root causes. Many of my patients are victims of generational or acute trauma, adverse childhood events, and carelessly prescribed pain medications for legitimate physical conditions which could have been addressed properly with a more thorough inquiry and treatment of their very real medical causes. I can say confidently that all of these people are good people. They experience inadequately addressed physical and emotional crippling pain and are trying to manage it in any way they can. Have you ever been in unbearable pain? If so, you will understand that a good person -- any person -- may seek any solution that reduces that pain to a tolerable level. If not, I hope you are grateful for your good fortune in having escaped the realities that these good people suffer and endure every day. To label these sufferers as "bad people" or thrill-seekers or criminals who exploit others merely adds another layer of suffering to their experience. And for the record, I am not a pain doctor and do not prescribe medications. What is amazing is that we do not "humanize addiction" with more compassionate understanding and genuinely effective treatment than we do.
39
This is a regressive attitude. The same that started the war on drugs that devastated communities all over the country. Addiction is a disease, not a decision.
9
Now that this is known please take off the egregious government restrictions on hydrocodone for those in chronic pain. Tis shameful what these poor souls have to endure now.
15
For every day I get annoyed at the NYT bloviators and threaten to cancel a subscription that stretches back decades in one for or another, they produce a piece like this.
A dreadful tale and thank you for it.
It's why I subscribe.
32
World class reporting, riveting story telling and true empathy, this article has the makings of an award winning piece. I subscribe to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Lately I have been disappointed with the New York Times and was thinking about canceling my subscription. It is articles like these that make me a subscriber.
33
Pulitzer worthy.
17
Breathtaking peace. But where do we go from here?
6
China seems to retaliate for Opium war in XlXth century
Readers who like this story: check out the new book “Fentanyl, Inc.” by Ben Westoff, which first reported on the Henkes, and takes you inside Chinese fentanyl labs.
6
Please dust off that Pulitzer.
8
Very in depth reporting! So the New York Times does give Trump credit! Wow!
2
If the author keeps this up he's going to be the next William Langewiesche. More long-form journalism please.
11
So, why not stop the importation of ANYTHING from China, regardless of the variety of middlemen employed, until US Customs has verified that nothing illegal is being carried into our country. Several thousand ships backed up at Long Beach will convince the Chinese government to wake up. Might prevent the entry of trademark infringing goods as well.
China is not our friend. It is our enemy and we should treat it as such. They lure us with their abusive labor practices and lax attitudes toward poisoning their environment and our capitalist firms whore themselves to have access to their enormous markets, but the trade is that we open ourselves to their completely amoral trade practices. You can't get any lower. When the day comes that we can say that we do not sell products made in China, unless they have been super vetted, we will have indeed made America great again.
26
Um, this would cripple our economy and cause deep global repercussions not just on an economic level but an environmental one. Isolationism and demonizing others is not a viable solution..:
7
@MJAH
It would not cripple the US economy. We would just have less junk around the house. We could certainly make up for the economic distress by cutting the miltary industrial complex in half or more and raising taxes appropriately.
1
@MJAH
Blame it on China, blame everything on China; it is easier to scapegoat than to address the real problem and to look at own deficiencies. America will never be great again with this approach. But go ahead, even embrace and re-elect Donald Trump, America's best pal--the enemy within.
Bad Karma dudes. We forced the Chinese to guy Opium, fought 2 wars with them in little remembered history. Doesn't feel to good when the shoe returns. It was a Criminal Justice problem when minorities were killing themselves in the inner cities with crack, now that young white men and women are dropping dead it has become a Public Health issue!
14
amazing heartfelt journalism. thank you.
9
wonderfully written and amazing journalism.
8
This. This is journalism.
17
Amazing piece. This is what I subscribed for!
59
I am glad to see this public health issue is receiving more attention given the risk it presents.
I first heard of fentanyl in 2010 while taking care of my father when he entered palliative care / hospice. Along with bottles of liquid morphine and lorazepam, I was given boxes of the trans-dermal fentanyl patches with only the warning of, "Be careful handling these, they are strong."
The morphine and fentanyl did very little to ease his pain, and the lorazepam worked marginally better (a benzodiazepine and not an opioid). You want to know what did work? Marijuana, and I did not have to worry about it killing him. In the end I disposed of all the opioids and benzos because there was a better alternative.
22
Great article. Extremely illuminating and I hope the reporters continue reporting on this horrific problem. Thanks.
30
The amount of people dying from drug use today is staggering. Its widely know that when an illegal street brand causes a death from an overdose, it becomes a valued selling point of its potency. How crazy is that. The sad facts are 90% of addicts never divorce themselves of the drug, even with years of treatment. I wish there was an answer and a cure.
15
That's false, it is NOT widely known that OD deaths make rhe value rise.
2
@Pepperman There are answers and cures, but most people do not have the money to afford them. That in itself is sick.
3
@Pepperman
90%? not 92% or 89% or 86% ?
Where did you get those numbers from?
The sad facts are-you don't know what the true fact actually are.
2
This document is logically written about the present state of business in opioid supply and use.
Why so many people are addicted to these drugs.
The answer straight forward, big pharma and US government, especially FDA.
Pharmaceutical companies, invent or develop from existing knowledge, a new drug. Then it has to be approved by FDA, premier drug agency in the world. Usually the review officers are chemists, pharmacists, and some cases physicians.
For example Oxycodone, which belongs to a class of drugs known as opioid (narcotic) analgesics, related to morphine. Morphine is an addictive substance. So any review officer should have logically asked the addictive potential of this Oxycodone, based on structure function chemistry. Then should have asked to more studies for addiction potential. Then, frankly, it should not have been approved.
Since it certainly works better than Morphine, several physicians generously prescribed it
Essentially, USFDA and Physicians made hundreds of thousands of addicts in USA.
Young people want to experiment with new pleasure enhancing substances starting with nicotine, and alcohol. Some of them graduate to norcotics. This is more so in USA.
Under these circumstances, what is the point blaming the suppliers, and that too from foreign countries.
It might have been easy to go after weak Latin countries, but not with an equal power like China. No wonder China blames us for being a liberal society. Need personal discipline.
9
@Reddy
"The answer straight forward, big pharma and US government, especially FDA."
No , not true. Narcotics are controlled and invaluable parts of our pharmacopeia. Fentanyl is so potent that it should have not been approved (see statement quoted from Dr. Dripps), but it was already used in Europe and that I did not know. But as to the rest of the opioids and our crisis, doctors have to prescribe these meds and pharmacies fill them. There are bad doctors. There is no national registry for Oxycodone prescriptions unlike the registry that works for a retina A, the best Rx for some acne, because it cause birth defects. As to the rest of supply, except for stolen shipments (I have not heard of these), the problem is drug cartels.
14
@Reddy your solution of not approving painkilling drugs if they are addictive leaves a lot of people with acute and chronic pain who have legitimate needs for these drugs suffering, sometimes in agony. Recreational use is a problem but it should not be solved on the backs of people who are ill and suffering.
12
Bailey’s story does not involve a ‘big pharma’ product. Only ‘street drugs’.
1
The ease of production and lack of expense make fentanyl something that cannot be more than modestly controlled, over the medium term. China's gov't claims its "due to Western liberalism" but it's really due to biology. They're doing opioid research with worms.
Tales of international trafficking show vague outlines of the problem. Chinese have a jaded view, since Western "wars" addicted their population. They also know opioids are like mosquitoes. If you dump enough malarial mosquitoes into an area, the result will be people with malaria. Dump enough opioids the result is addicts.
That shows what to do. Cure it. When thousands got AIDs, that was the demand: a cure. Act up to cure addiction.
Opioids work through neural circuitry - literally a circuit, a closed loop, that involves pain, expectation, relief. A loop means it's always active. A break in the circuit turns it off.
Where's funding to deactivate addiction neural circuitry? Lots of R&D for alternative pain relievers, closer to impacted cells than afferent pathways. Those can be marketed.
A pill won't turn off the circuit. Instead, maybe light-controlled monoclonal antibodies can inactivate individual neurons. Or liposomal delivery. Most research on these delivery agents is for Alzheimer or cancers. Very very little for addiction.
Takes political will.
15
@Brian
Perhaps you should study a bit of medicine or neurology; perhaps even a little sophomore science would help.
You don't know anything about which you write.
Similies are not how the brain functions; certainly not the ones you purport here.
I call it Revenge of the Opium War. Far worse than 9/11 attack on the Homeland: tens of thousands of deaths, $631 billion over past 4 years per recent study. Tremendous national security failure. Multinational criminal syndicates and oligarch families alike- Johnson, Purdue etc.- fully funded and acting with impunity; prisons full of addicts and low-level dealers, at additional cost of billions. Suffering of families incomprehensible, like a major war.
https://www.apnews.com/8a4c97e621af4026a22d6462b425702c
15
Excellent article. Thank you. The descriptions of the various shell companies offices in HK evoked the strange universe of Blade Runner. Such a sad story, I feel sorry for Bailey and his family.
“Doing drugs didn’t make him less of a good person,” Coffman said. “He just got a little lost.”
12
Excellent article, and indicates how insane it would be to have encrypted, unbreakable Libra transactions (no thank you Mr. Zuckerberg) and insane it is have cryptocurrency.
13
@NYT Reader thats what you got out of this article? most drug deals on the street level are done in cash, you want to regulate that too?
lets see:
cash: completely untraceable except with dye packs for bank robberies
(most) cryptocurrencies: easily traceable history on a blockchain, aka, a digital distributed ledger system.
i agree that the idea of zuckerberg owning a currency is a bad idea. but for very different reasons than you.
1
Great journalism. Thank you to the reporters.
12
I'm against the death penalty generally, but for drug dealers I could possibly be convinced. Even murderers have a greater moral compass.
8
We never learned from the disaster that was the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
4
Just think. We get iPhones as well as fentanyl, from China—“the land of, 100,000 ‘false store-fronts’, posing as ‘accounting firms.’”
Wow. What next?
—
It appears as though the Chinese have got us where they want us.
We seem to be “addicted,” to whatever they send our way. We love our iPhones and we love our fentanyl, and we can’t stop using either. What’s to be done?
—
Maybe Trump is right. Maybe America really is, “being taken for a ride,” by the Chinese. Have they become our masters?
—
”Independence,” has always come with a hefty price-tag. But are we really ready to, “pay-up?”
—
PS: This article is a really good-read!
10
China's revenge for the opium wars.
3
Engrossing. I couldn't stop reading this article. Well done!
11
Hard drugs are too dangerous to allow the black market to control their distribution. All the hard work detailed in this report is the equivalent of a boy sticking his finger in a dike and thinking that will save the day. Everyone will be better off if public health authorities distribute hard drugs, with a harm reduction mandate. No more need for crimes to get funds to pay black market prices, no more empowering drug gangs, the last people in the world we should want to empower.
61
@newageblues
At the presidential debates, Yang advocated decriminalizing drugs, as Portugal has done, with good results.
8
@newageblues
Well said.
You can not repeal the law of supply and demand.
Laws banning and requiring prescription for many classes of drugs in the US started with the first controls in 1906 for cocaine and opiates. Yet, while we pay billions of dollars to fund the DEA, state and local drug enforcement and to incarcerate tens of thousands for drug offenses, usage is on the rise and tens of thousands die each year. Afghanistan in 2017 produced, under the eyes of our military, an estimated 90% of the world's illegal poppy-based opiates.
In 1920 alcohol was largely banned in the US and how did that turn out?
After prohibition ended in 1930 the next federal drug law was the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act of 1937. You needed a tax stamp, but they would not sell it to you.That federal ban is still on the books, but is ignored by a growing number of states.
Oh, and the biggest killer of all, tobacco, has never been federally banned and now our tobacco finds its biggest market in...China.
It is long past time to end our experiment with these banning these substances and turn to education and controlled distribution.
14
Writing from Portugal where all drugs, including fentanyl, have been decriminalized. While not the same as legalization, drug use is treated as a health issue rather than a criminal one. Apparently it has worked well with funds from jails/policing going to treatment.
21
Excellent article resulting from hard investigative work. But it will be nothing but a small story in the enormity of the opioid and synthetic opioid epidemic killing over 70,000 persons in the US alone last year, if the investigation doesn’t continue until all the individuals involved in this deadly trade, all the agencies (DEA, FDA, CDC, ONDCP, etc) that failed to heed the warnings that were raised at each stage of unfolding, all the US pharmaceutical companies that pushed for fentanyl products that could be obtained and used outside hospital operating rooms, manufacturers and export agencies in China and elsewhere that are the source of most non-prescription fentanyl being sold here, etc. etc., and they are all made to pay for the massive efforts it will take to treat the estimated 2-3 million persons already addicted to opioids and to develop non addictive/non-lethal pain treatments.
It’s easy to say that if the federal agencies that failed us hadn’t been pre-occupied with enforcing the irrational and ineffective prohibition of cannabis, that this larger story might not have happened. Its easy to say that if the US PHS had been allowed & supported research aimed at developing Cannabinoid-based analgesics, we wouldn’t find ourselves without the scientific knowledge we so desperately need to combat & end opioid misuse & the enormous toll the epidemic is taking at the individual, family, community, State & National levels. The hard part is finding & ending the root causes.
15
@David G Ostrow, MD PhD the root causes? Despair, anxiety, children given mood altering drugs for behavior control, fear about finding one's place in a world that's come unglued?
7
@Mary Jo Wood - Or the fact that, you know, drugs and alcohol are fun. Especially when you’re a teenager. The terrible part is that a small subset of the population is genetically or epigenetically predisposed to addiction. It’s not all existential angst.
6
Wow! What an awesome article. The writing is superb, and had me riveted like a great novel, but it's tragic to know that it's all true.
*This* is why I subscribe to the times. Bravo!
46
The sheer work that went into this is staggering. Great work by all involved!
48
At the bottom of it all, money and shell companies. The author found 18,668 companies at a single Hong Kong address. Sounds just like Delaware or Panama! Allowing such deception has grotesque consequences. So why doesn't our own government regulate company registrations? Congress could make it much harder for criminals to move their money, but most wealthy people instead use shell companies to hide their own wealth, whether ill-gotten or not, from taxes or other penalties. A world ruled by the wealthy is not good for the rest of us.
27
@Gkhan This is the heart of it. Algorithms to sell us shoes but somehow not deployed to identify patterns in moving cash and product. I guess it's not in the interest of higher-ups to know. Besides, opiod deaths help keep unemployment numbers lower.
2
@Gkhan And Donald Trump hides his taxes and launders money, bilked the taxpayer and accepts emoluments.
1
Number of people who die from consumption of various substances in the US:
Tobacco (every year) 443,000
Alcohol (2010) 88,000
Opiates (2017) 72,000
Crystal Meth (2014) 3,728
Cocaine (2017) 13,942
Benzodiazapines (2017) 11,537
The issue is freedom. Humans have a right to choose what they think and the right to decide what substances they choose to consume. It should not be a crime for any adult to use any of the above substances just as it should not be a crime to have different opinions and thoughts.
7
How many of us who don’t exercise this “freedom” get to die or suffer harm as a direct or indirect result of those who do? Impaired drivers ring any bells? Victims of robberies to fund these addictions ring any bells? Second hand smoke ring any bells?
Or are conscripted into paying for the medical or law enforcement or incarceration or rehabilitation costs we as a society incur collectively?
11
@nochesdad My understanding is that people, innocent uninvolved people, can die if they happen to touch something with fentanyl. How is that not a crime committed by people who supply and/or use this drug? I have heard of apartments and houses that are basically death traps because the renters move out and leave traces of fentanyl or the place was a meth lab.
I used to think illegal drugs were just like alcohol and should be similarly regulated, but this is far from the situation.
9
@nochesdad Beg to differ - this has nothing to do with freedom. Folks would not choose deadly substances if they were not available. Sometimes we need laws and regulations to protect people from themselves, and to stop others, whether a large corporation or street dealer, from profiting off of human weakness and death. When you add all the drug addicted babies to the equation the situation becomes even more dire.
54
I was lost in this article for the last couple of hours recreating every bit of it in visual imagination. This piece by Alex Palmer is not only well written and immersive, but also manages to do justice in capturing the scope and reach of both the Fentanyl ring and the incredible operation to bring it down. Life imitating art indeed!
28
Here’s a good idea. Let’s declare WAR on fentanyl, because all our other drug wars have worked so well. Really? Yes, war works for drug dealers, DEA agents, cops, rehab clinics, EMTs, weapons manufacturers, social workers, the courts, doctors, nurses, hospitals, the military-pharmaceutical complex, and let’s not forget those for-profit prisons.
19
@Dasha Kasakova
One of my biggest surprises in researching drug abuse was the salaries of the people fighting the war on drugs.
An undercover cop in upstate New York told me that he was making (about) $100,000 a year in today's money. In addition, he had an expense account and a car.
I wonder how much the people in this story were making.
He lost his job because he failed a drug test for cocaine, in what he (credibly) claimed was a false positive.
Karma?
5
Thank you. Terrific investigative journalism.
23
"Doing drugs didn't make his less of a good person..."
I wish everyone understood that.
36
@Jdrider - I dunno. Many (although certainly not all) drug users will lie, cheat, and steal to get more of their preferred substance. And god forbid they become parents; nothing will screw up a child like a drug-addicted mom or dad.
8
The Chinese are undoubtedly loving the idea of being able to kill Westerners as payback for their Opium Wars. It's blatantly obvious to anyone with a brain that this is going on with the permission of the Chinese government. If instead of producing fentanyl any of these factories printed pamphlets that criticized the government, I guarantee it would be shut down in no time.
It's time to stop being naive about the intentions of the Chinese government. If facing that means we and our NATO allies need to cut China off and pay more money for the goods we use, so be it. If any business leaders try to interfere with this process, they should be tried for treason.
51
@John Chenango China is simply sending a product to a place that has a buyer. They are not forcing Americans to take the drug, nor are they invading an American costal town to force the American government to open a port for the purpose of importing the drug. Although that last part does sound familiar...
It's not good to resort to a yellow peril reaction for the problems of American drug users. The more realistic motive is simply profit, just like it is in most capitalistic countries. Sinophobia is such an ugly look.
5
@John Chenango actually according to the author of this piece it is all about "Differences in culture, language and mission"...
Thank you for this well researched and clearly written story. Amazing.
15
I wonder if he started with cigarettes? The real gateway drug.
3
@Richard Katz DO. doubt it - probably the marijuana mentioned in the article and alcohol.
3
I doubt marijuana OR alcohol are gateway drugs to opiates any more than milk or orange juice.
What IS a gateway drug to illegal opiates and opioids are legally prescribed pharmaceutical opioids.
This is well documented.
One way to start is to prescribe fewer opiates. That’s right, less pain medication.
6
@Max Actually marijuana is a gateway drug to the use of opiates. There is a high percentage of heroin addicts who began their drug use with marijuana. However, it also clear that a vast majority of people who smoke marijuana do not go on to use other more harmful substances. I have worked in several substance abuse residential treatment centers. I have never seen someone admitted who were addicted to "milk or orange juice". I have worked with many people who were addicted to heroin and or marijuana. Yes, marijuana is addictive. Approximately 9% of people who use marijuana become addicted to it. However, I think that marijuana and all drugs should be legal. People should have as much right to smoke a joint as to have a beer if they want to.
3
Wrong is wrong but it is probably asking too much for a nation devastated by the Opium wars to get too bent out of shape about Americans getting addicted to or dying from fentanyl.
Americans should rather focus on why there is such demand for drugs.
30
@Lilo
If someone is exposed to these drugs, they get into a state where they demand it.
1
@Lilo
That would mean Americans have to look at themselves and address the fact of why so many individuals are miserable. Politicians would have to take a holistic approach to life and stop looking at these short term wins. corporations would have to treat Americans like people and stop looking for every dollar that they could get from them .
The presidential candidates want to talk about the kitchen table issues well drug use is a major issue and no one is talking about it.
China has enabled Americans to kill themselves in the luxury of their own homes. Another war on drugs is going to do nothing but waste funds that could be better spent actually doing something.
We need to medically address chronic pain and provide holistic methodology to address the addiction issues. We need to stop worshiping at the alter of Wall Street and begin to be human again if we ever .
were. Capitalism is not the answer to anything once you are dead.
Terrific research article with a very sad ending, we can do better and we must .
6
The legal concept of shell companies needs to be addressed here in the U.S. and after that with anyone who does business with the U.S.
We can’t be the only country who’s sick of this currently legal but rampantly abused system.
11
I’m starting to think that China is out to kill our youth and others by allowing the production and sale of fentanyl and other fake drugs. Personally if I know some food item or pharmaceutical is made in China I will not buy it no matter what it is. But how many things are made in China that we don’t even know about! Maybe our next President will really care about the people of our United States
14
I have enjoyed reading this article very much. Thank you
4
IF IF IF only the DEA would do this same type of job against the executives at the big pharma companies... oops I forgot they get protection
6
Do we really need the DEA anymore?
2
Tremendous journalism. When it comes to opioids big Pharma compared to Chinese Pharma is really micro Pharma.
6
Wow! Incredible reporting .... Amazing job.
6
This along with the recent 60 Minutes expose on the use of the USPS to transport fentanyl (most interesting and suggests total irresponsibility on the part of the USPS) provides more interesting information about our dependency on China (for chemicals to make Lord know what in this case drugs/meds). HOWEVER, what is the allure of these drugs. Cocaine supposedly gives on an energy high -- but heroin, fentanyl make one sleepy. Personally, I find the drug behavior obnoxious -- hate walking down the street and smelling a dead skink as someone enjoys his joint!
So long as we know very little about addiction these behaviours will continue. Not that people can't quit. but sometimes that means they need to escape their environs permanently as well as the drug. The story about the young man is very sad. Dead at age 18 because of very stupid behavioiur… because... what made him so profoundly unhappy and disfunctional? Where are the jobs? Not everyone can be kept in school to stay out of trouble. What happened with the friends? Did any of these kids work? go to school? What were their ambitions if any?
12
@Auntie Mame I took a single postoperative fentanyl pill. I was totally amazed by how good I felt. I can understand how one could become addicted to fentanyl and perhaps how difficult it might be to stop using it. Even more surprising to me was how many pills the doctor wrote the prescription for—more than 50!
9
@Auntie Mame so you want our mail to be searched before it arrives to us? do you have any idea how illegal that is?
1
I've supposed (incorrectly apparently) that Russia was behind this fentanyl/heroin surge to weaken the US. After all, what other county (in modern times) knows how effectively these drugs destroy a society....instead China (their knowledge goes back centuries)
2
What year did "Siegfried Recipe" get posted online?
One anonymous innovator, claiming to be a French chemist by the name of Siegfried, posted his findings online, in a brief, awkwardly worded paper that was unlike anything that had come before it. His interest in fentanyl was recreational, not academic. He had dug up an obscure synthesis method, then gathered reactions from users for over a year. “The feedback of the consumers was very good,” he wrote. But the risk of overdose, he noted, was extreme: The fentanyl produced by the method “MUST be diluted, else there will be a lot of overdoses!” (The true identity of Siegfried has never been discovered, and no one has come forward to claim credit for his work.)
2
Wait. I thought Trump said his pal Xi had agreed to stop the shipments of fentenyl to the US. Surely Trump didn't lie....
11
Should Zhang be considered a mass murderer? Should gun manufacturers be considered mass murderers? I don't know.
3
It should be considered an act of war sending these types of drugs into our country.
4
@Deirdre
Countries armed with nuclear weapons do their best to avoid fighting each other.
To their attitude, “we have no fentanyl problem“: Well yeah, you execute people with drug problems so the PROBLEM goes away… Actually not a bad way to deal with it; the problem DOES extinguish itself!
4
Exceptional piece of journalism. As a NYC paramedic, I deal with fentanyl related overdoses daily. I've been advocating for years now that fentanyl is posing a greater threat to users and rescue workers alike. Fentanyl finds its way into marijuana, cocaine, many varying pills, etc making its effects unpredictable.
The public health impact of fentanyl is much greater then health and law enforcement officials are willing to accept. Flooding the streets recklessly with needles and narcan is not resolving this crisis.
Thank you Alex Palmer and all those involved in bringing attention to a critical issue.
26
@Phil - "Fentanyl finds its way into marijuana..."
Interesting. Where I live, we buy pot off of the shelf at stores in sealed bags with a lab report on the front.
It lists the name of the strain and the weight of the bag. It lists the THCA, THC, and CBD percentage by weight. It lists the grower's name and license number along with the seller's name and license number. Last but not least, it lists the pesticide used. My bag in front of me says "NEEM" for pesticide which is the standard out here.
I used to live under a bridge with meth addicts in this city and never heard of fentanyl being mixed with pot. Mixed with meth? Sure. Mixed with heroin? Sure.
Mixed with cocaine? Been here 35 years and never heard of anyone using or having cocaine. Meth is cheaper and lasts longer. But pot? Must be a NYC thing. Out here, the potheads are so fussy that if you only flush your plants for one week before harvest they will hand the bag back to you complaining that they can taste the Cal-Mag that was used. And the street dealers disappeared because they cannot compete with the stores' low cannabis prices and insane selection.
4
@tom harrison Quite interesting how things can vary nationally. I work in a challenging area where substance abuse is rampant and every drug available, so its draws quite a wide variety of users. That being said, many are what we call polysubstance abusers, or those that take a variety of drugs such as heroin, cocaine, pcp, etc. The pot here seems more of a 'skunk weed' it smells terribly and seems to permeate through walls. Meth is not very big here for a multitude of reasons from what I've heard. Sometimes it seems PCP and angel dust is making a comeback when we start getting back to back cases. Among the homeless community its anything thats available but most K2 or synthetic marijuana. K2 depends on the batch whether they're unconscious or completely delirious and agitated.
Nevertheless, thanks Tom for a little insight into the coastal contrasts.... cheers
3
What could possibly be a medically ethical theraputic use of a drug that is, by most reports, 50 times the power of morphine? Outside of the confines of inpatient treatment in a hospital, it is ludicrous to allow fentanyl's use outside of a hospital setting. As little as 2 grams can kill a human being. It isn't cocaine or marijuana, which can lead to an altered mental state, different from normal experience to users. Fentanyl is, instead, a powerful poison tha should simply be outlawed outside of hospitals.
7
2 grams of fentanyl would kill an entire small city of human beings.
3
@Farmer D - Fentanyl patches can provide excellent relief for those suffering from chronic pain (including pets). Just because some people like to get high doesn’t mean those with terminal cancer shouldn’t be allowed to use this product.
12
Once again, the underground world of drugs continues until the end-user dies. The secret remains while the dealer or the distributor is protected under the cloak of mystery. Individuals who are caught in the end-user trap shouldn't be the ones who go to prison. I hope that's one important message that come out of this heart-breaking story. Amazing story Alex and thank you Buemi for your never-ending dogged search to the source.
10
Anyone who believes that the Chinese government has an interest in stopping importation of fentanyl into the US ought to read more about the Opium Wars of the 19th century. The fact that most press coverage tends to omit historical context from our current opioid crisis does a disservice to American readers and voters.
15
Thank you Mr. Palmer and the NYT. an excellent piece of journalism.
8
One could not have written a better screenplay for a TV entertainment series - oh wait, they did. Sad, but true, and so, so very real.
Excellent and informative article exposing the horrors - both personal and societal - of the drug addiction problem. It inflicts horrible trauma locally yet is fueled by the uncaring and largely unregulated international world that does not care about a 20-something’s death in North Dakota.
Politics, now fully at international levels and hidden in the anonymous world-wide web and aided by nation-state indifference to outcomes of regulatory neglect, as this article clearly exposes, will unfortunately continue to hamper all meaningful efforts to address the very real problems we face as a planet - be it climate change, drug abuse, unchecked war and civil unrest, poverty, hunger, and an incredibly disproportionate sharing of wealth, etc.
It all makes good fodder for entertainment purposes but, in reality, people are suffering and dying needlessly due to the indifference of global politics which, as the article shows, still deeply entrenched in a “not my problem” mentality.
Change global politics from an economic, uncaring monster into a caring, humanity-oriented entity, and perhaps our dominant species role on this planet will be more than just the tiny blip in time of the planet’s evolution.
6
I wonder when this country will start to take real steps to counter the causes of problems like this. Going after the dealers/suppliers only encourages others to take their place. It’s a reactionary measure. True resolution requires we tackle the root of the problems causing kids to overdose on drugs at high rates.
10
@Waleed Khalid
It seems that kids get hooked by other kids selling dope. We do have a law on the books that says selling dope is prohibited within school territory but it hasn't seemed to stop the flow of drugs.
At a young age, kids turn to their peer group for acceptance and away from their families, We all know that peer groups have greater influence and are more powerful than family.
Maybe another good place to tackle drug use would be in schools. I'm not talking about police presence. I'm talking education in health class, assemblies with speakers, and a public health care talk line to report drug sellers.
It would require a change in the many ways we treat drug use now, but what do we have to lose, nothing has been successful so far?
1
Great story. It’s a pity that all this work is necessary, and often useless, due to the drug war. Legalization of all drugs would take away profits from criminals, leave police time to pursue violence and fraud, and save countless lives.
People will always use drugs. Others will always sacrifice ethics for profits. Legalize, regulate, educate. Very few of those overdoses were suicides.
What about the profit-driven pharma industry? What about OxyContin? What about alcohol? I know that legalization won’t end abuses, but it will reduce them.
There will be more drugs and more deaths. Stop pretending the war will ever end. Surrender to reality, and then we will make progress.
13
Kids have to be taught the difference between marijuana, pharmaceutical drugs and illegal drugs. Two can be addictive and lethal, one is not. How much of our pharmaceuticals are dependent on precursors from China? Can't they make them here?
2
Great work ! Excellent reporting.
I am not sure what to make of this piece.
If China wanted they would have shut all this down in a week.
So this represents a weakness on part of US to bring China to task.
Just put extra 10% tariff on their goods as punishment for trafficking, and label them as a drug dealer on world stage. Disallow access to those sites like Alibaba if they fail to control drug advertising. Fine them heavily for every posting they fail to control. And shut down Wickr.
5
Great article. Somewhere in the hierarchy of the times (new Publisher) a decision was made to do this type of reporting. Thank you. I specifically liked the information about convictions,life imprisonments,27years imprisonments for big dealers. Americans have this fixation with pleasure and drugs can bring that regardless of the dangers. That and the Chinese need for money before anything else. A potent mess.
11
This article ties in to the one of several weeks ago on self-defeat in rural America. No hope of something better makes it easier to “trip out”.
5
I suspect that many in China are not too interested in stopping something that weakens America.
7
The most accurate statement in the article....
“If we analyze the ‘public health emergency’ in the United States, it is easy to find that the root cause is the abuse of opioids,” the editorial explained. Doctors gave out too many painkillers, and Americans became addicted. Now they had started using fentanyl, and it was killing them. Drug abuse was an old problem for Americans, the article said; now they had just encountered “a new devil.”
3
"2,000 inspectors at the agency, and they conducted a total of only 751 inspections that year".
Wow, I want that mint government job. About every third year, you do one inspection, and file one report, then take the next two years off!!
6
So it's a complete failure to respond at every level of our government. Got it.
2
In January 17, 1920 the Eighteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution effectively established the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the United States by declaring the production, transport, and sale of alcohol illegal. However, Americans wanted to drink booze so the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution repealed the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Twenty-first Amendment was ratified on December 5, 1933. It is unique among the 27 amendments of the U.S. Constitution for being the only one to repeal a prior amendment and to have been ratified by state ratifying conventions.
Supreme court legalizes recreational marijuana, and soon to follow recreational heroin and recreational cocaine.
Americans want more drugs and alcohol.
1
@manoflamancha - If I'm not mistaken, the first amendment you referred to also banned heroin being sole over the counter without prescription. Around this time you refer to, the NYC chief of police stated that 90% of all of the crime in his city was related to heroin addiction.
People who drink everyday and smoke pot everyday still manage to get up the next day and go to work. They pay their bills. They even remember to take out the trash bins on Thursday. But heroin addicts rarely pull this off.
If I have a toddler in the house, I'm going to cover all of the electrical sockets and never leave a loaded gun sitting on the coffee table. For the same reason, I can never get on board with making heroin legal or easier to access.
2
A pulitzer price worthy article. Shining light on so many aspects in this complicated arena of this devils drug. With fentanyl it is like the scifi movies from 15 years ago with the „new drug“ were documentaries. Loved the stories inside, specially from HK and China. RIP all its victims.
Btw from a European perspective this opioid crisis looks more like a health for profit crisis. A system running amok of greed. Health professionals preying in the name of money on people when they are weakest. In so many aspects it is like a massive rip off scheme with reputation disorder. And with opioids it is on top extremely letal.
3
The Drug Enforcement Agency isn't filled with heroes like Mike Buemi. Chinese manufacturers are flooding the US with illegal fentanyl, which is directly responsible for thousands of overdose deaths every year. Yet DEA agents are determined to harass physicians they decide are writing “too many” opioid prescriptions to people living with chronic pain.
The physicians stop writing the prescriptions and their patients either live in agony or commit suicide when the suffering becomes unbearable, yet overdose deaths continue to rise.
By intimidating physicians and denying patients the opioids they need, DEA agents are increasing the demand for illegal pain relief and guaranteeing the survival of an agency that has seen its arrest and conviction numbers fall off a cliff since states began legalizing cannabis.
The “war on drugs” has been a resounding failure; the casualties are kids like Bailey Henke and people living with chronic pain who are driven to either illegal narcotics or suicide thanks to agencies like the DEA.
9
Search this article for the words "regulate" and "regulation" and it will become widely apparent why regulations exist and what is often meant by less regulation being better for business.
People and businesses may engage in unethical and immoral activities without it being illegal. It's not possible to enforce laws that don't exist.
4
Amazing! To be honest , and even as a physician, I had some doubts about this. After all, how could all this be happening in plain sight?!? This is a Pulitzer prize worthy story. Kudos to Alex Palmer and Suzie Wu.
13
This is so well written and precisely detailed...I put aside everything else I needed to do closely read this. I'm almost sorry to put it this way, but this is a truly compelling and yes, an addictive account of how our taste for escape from the demands of day-to-day life are feed so some can grow rich on the suffering of others.
7
One of the problems with fentanyl overdoses is that many EMTs and other first responders are unaware that it may take 5, 10, even 20 doses of naloxone or naltrexone to reverse the effects.
For heroin overdoses, a single ampule of naloxone (Narcan) will often do the trick but fentanyl is different.
Even scarier are anecdotal reports of Carfentanil reaching these shores. In Asia, that drug is used to sedate elephants and other large mammals.
It is far beyond time to make these opiate antagonists available over the counter.
5
Thank you, thank you. Amazingly detailed article. Let's hope for a better government ahead with some of these amazing gutsy investigators and journalists in the limelight where they should be.
10
Thank you. Amazing work and detail. Please find ways to keep referring people to this article. And reach out to other news outlets. Most important work> Thank you again and again.
18
This was a well written and informative story. Thank you.
I appreciated the structure and simplicity of the way this story was told.
22
If only there was a way to scan all shipments and packages for these chemical residues and develop AI technology to handle this information so that it does not pass further into the country.
For those already addicted providing free untainted drugs securely with the aid of a support worker and specially trained medical team to manage them off over time is the only way to curb the deaths from poisonings which is essentially what this is. This is not recreational drugs this is poison.
19
What a well-written and thoroughly researched story. Cultural context is what our State Department is for, and the evisceration of institutional memory the last few years will not serve us well if we do not get back on track as soon as possible. Thank you for such an informative story; this one deserves promotion on your platforms.
38
This is one of the most stunning pieces of reporting I have ever encountered. Thanks NY, and keep up the fine reporting at this level. There is far too little of it in today's universe.
94
Excellent writing and great read, Mr. Palmer! Thank you NYT. Real story to educate us around a problem in America. Truly, it's been hard to understand the details from an outsider's perspective. I am so very sorry for the Henke's loss. Thank you too, Mr. Buemi.
62
These countries sending deadly fentanyl into the US by the ton are not our friends.They would just as soon see a generation of able American young workers addicted and dead.It's a war of attrition and foreign entities are winning.Mexico China and India have never done us any favors ,yet all the manufacturing and IT jobs are getting outsourced ,they do not need or want American labor ,and this report proves that they will go to all means to insure our citizens have easy access to deadly drugs.Control customs ,control the borders put the dealers in prison ,save this nation.
32
@Alan Einstoss "They" are supplying a demand created in this country. It is too easy to blame others for our home grown drug epidemic. We do need to take strong steps to shut off the supply. But, we will just find a substitute substance to feed the addictions in this country. The billions being spent on a "War On Drugs" to include insane prison sentences, needs to transform into cures of and prevention for addiction.
8
@Alan Einstoss
Outsourcing is because of greedy, philosophically sterile capitalists who only see what's good for them.
4
@Alan Einstoss You can't stop drugs that way, how many more generations will it take for you to accept that?
3
Great article for knowledge & to think about how China rules the world business wise heavy handedly. The raw material used for manufacturing medicines(drogs)in Pharmaceutical industry must be of pharmaceutical grade(purity 99.99%+),not just regular type used for other purposes as per FDA standards which China doesn’t bother for. So we import raw materials from China with poor purity grade and used for drug manufacturing. Cheaper manufacturing costs makes more profits but the patients pays gets ripped off paying more for below Standard drugs which can harm them. Many time customers end up in counterfeit drugs with nothing in it. Because of USA being envy for its prosperity & living standards and China wants to replace US as #1 super power,it’s time to deal with its rogue elements bent to harm US.
18
It all goes back to China. From the devastation of our industrial heartland, to the fentanyl crisis, to the speculation of real estate in our major cities and the corruption of our businesses including the NBA.
48
@Chloe I don't think it's accurate to say it ALL goes back to China. Because if there were no customers or willing partners here in the US, there would be no market for China.
20
@Chloe
"It all goes back to China."
Does it? Isn't that is the easy way: blaming someone else?
Maybe there is something more fundamental behind this story? And more fundamental wrong? Maybe it all goes back to loving capitalism and having 'fun' in an irresponsible way. Back to the 'American Dream': making a lot of money, doesn't matter how; thinking money makes people happy.
And making the youth wanting to be happy even more irresponsible and easier: just taking a pill. Or smoke something, whatever there is, and getting a high?
Maybe this al starts at home? Every single home. Wherever?
Maybe the Chinese people are just following a bad example? Making their own wrong 'Dreams'?
13
@Chloe
Don't blame "China." Blame AMERICAN CEOS and their shareholders who really don't care, do they? And the USPS which provides almost free shipping for these products. Bovmt helps create lost of problems.
3
Excellent reporting by Alex Palmer.
NY Times -- Please give this important piece a higher profile so more readers notice and read.
Thank you for such outstanding research and reporting.
144
@The Alamo Kid -- ditto, Alamo Kid: "Excellent reporting." I, too, hope the article gains wide readership.
I also appreciated an earlier comment -- by Dino -- posing the most significant question: why are young people turning en mass to drugs?
While the comment seems flip to the point of cruelty, the Chinese official who said, "there is no supply without demand," is right. Our demand for drugs is what drives violence and corruption in Central and South America and now China.
So then, as many discuss above, is legalization as controlled substances--treatment over imprisonment--the best approach?
Surely we can do better than we're doing now.
2
I feel sorry for the parents, however they could know their children better. And do more when as in this woman's case she found her son using marijuana, which now with so many states trying to make money on it, must be so easy to use. So here is the dilemma and it is not surprising that kids who have perhaps few goals do this to themselves. Anyhow with fetanyl it does not last long, the kidding of themselves, or of their parents, or pretence that they lead a normal existence, because they don't and this drug especially if made in China will kill you. Haven't we had enough of this from China? Pollution, fake products such as milk for children, or fake vaccines, wall board and so on. Now they produce the ultimate killer. And our government focuses only on exports/imports, not on killer drugs and countries which do this. On refugees, not on countries which allow manufacturing on a wholesale level to be shipped to good old America. So this is very complicated...vulnerable youth with possibly distant parents or those who wish not to believe the truth from the start; wholesale production of drugs, starting with marijuana (the truth is it is often the start of addiction if not the only addiction & now States have legalized this) from which the user moves on to something worse; ineffective government policies and ultimately a huge cost to society, thanks to all of the above. Under the Republicans money making is key.
7
@JHM
"nd do more when as in this woman's case she found her son using marijuana, which now with so many states trying to make money on it, must be so easy to use."
Cannabis was no more or less difficult to get your hands on either before or after semi-prohibition was lifted in several states. Alcohol was ALWAYS easy to procure, and the second easiest, you guessed it, prescription drugs seen as "medicine."
1
Brilliant journalism! And hats off to the heroes of this story - to the truly brilliant sleuthing of Agent Mike Buemi of the DEA and all the other officers doing the plodding police work to crack this case; to all the officers and agents risking their lives to end this scourge. THANK YOU - truly thank you - for your courage and tenacity.
87
I can't even imagine all the chemical byproducts of drug manufacturing that enters the waters in China..and ultimately our shared oceans. It's ironic that China manufactures huge amounts of illicit drugs for the US and also produces large amounts of pharmaceuticals, some of which contain cancer-causing contaminants.
10
Excellent journalism.
When all is said and done, questions still remain unanswered. Why did this "perfect" young man use drugs to begin with. Using addictive drugs is a choice. Our lives are full of choices. Some right and some wrong. He made the wrong choices.
A thought. If the government could control and tax the use of addictive substances, they would legalize everything regardless of the morality.
7
In China, every school child is taught about the Opium Wars, and China's "100 years of humiliation" at the hands of the West. They don't just instill national pride; they instill a strong sense of historical grievance.
Maybe we should teaching that history here as well; it might make the motives and mindset of our adversarial partner easier to comprehend.
156
@Abraham I agree that it makes sense to teach our fellow Americans about the opium wars so we can understand China better.
I hope you will similarly agree that we should also be teaching our fellow Americans about the devastation wrought by the "Great Leap Forward" and "Cultural Revolution" and a hundred other criminal indignities wrought by the ruling Chines Regime so that Americans can better understand who we are dealing with?
We are far from being the only culpable party in this relationship.
46
@Andrew Well, judging by the majority of comments I've seen here, you might find it easy to point to China as the only "villian". But, if China were to shut down tomorrow, you would have at least 1/2 dozen other countries rushing in to take over.
9
Excellent work Mr. Palmer!
7
These young people couldn’t stand their unbearable heaviness of being and they made the choice to evade it .
Our society must be more prepared to catch the falling children before it is too late .
The question is how ?
Is too much freedom, less discipline,too much materialism, too much web interconnection causing this massive social problem ?
Let sociologists, ethical experts, philosophers, pharmacist and doctors analyze this disturbing situation.
13
@inter nos "Boredom". Perhaps we need to do a better job at getting young people more engaged in the educational process. There is an excellent piece on Curiosity Stream about what the educational process can be, watch it and you will appreciate what I mean.
7
@inter nos As a nurse I have always wondered why do people want to get high? This is the core and basic question that must be asked and answered, no matter how painful it is. Why do you want to get high? What is so terrible in your life? Only then can we start to struggle to find a solution to this problem. Let me end by asking you all several questions. If you drink why do you want to drink alcohol? What does it do for you? Is drinking necessary for you? People have been drinking since the ancient Egyptians, over 5000 years ago.
6
@Per Axel
I think it is a mistake to assume that there has to be something very wrong in a person's life for them to try drugs. Being told about the ecstasy of being high would pique anyone's curiosity.
1
" the purgatory between legitimate pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs. "
what does this mean? Is there a similar purgatory in other areas of law and regulation? I thought it was a basic premise that the law had to be clear.
1
Great & very detailed story, being in Asia, I can relate to so many of the things that we would never dream of in the US.
I also remember the pain of Carroll O'Connor over the death of his son due to drugs connected to a bit part actor that Carroll allowed to join the cast of the series, "In the Heat of the Night." Old timers may have seen the pitch that Carroll made about getting your kids away from drugs. That pitch really fortified me against all drug use, even prescription.
4
England used opium to devastate China for economic gain and colonization in the19th century, it was very effective. Perhaps China sees an opportunity to weaken adversaries in a similar way. They are super strict with their own citizens drug use but are apparently happy to scourge other nations. The controlled society of China could control the exports, I would think. From the Chinese perspective, I can see it as a cheap, useful bargaining chip.
60
The difference is the current sale of drug to USA is on willing buyer and willing seller basis. Opium war was started by one country (UK) to push drug/opium into reluctant country.
18
@CK
Chinese consumers wanted opium. It was illegal in China then just as it is in America today. Its the exact same situation.
@Joe They wanted opium after they became addicted.
It's curious that the 'fentanyl epidemic' is very much a North American - not global - phenomenon.
Illegal fentanyl didn't make it, at all, to the UK until 2016 and then only as an occasional 'cut' to street heroin in a single region of the country. Similarly, fentanyl (and its common analogues, carfentanyl and acroylfentanyl) have very limited deployment within the EU.
One explanation is that there is a much better supply of cheap, high quality heroin into Europe - there's much less incentive for dealers to cut it with fentanyl here. Another is that fentanyl is implicated in some fatal heroin but is going undetected. Because fentanyl toxicity remains rare, testing for flurofentanyl (the body's principal metabolite of fentanyl) is not undertaken currently as part of 'routine' autopsy toxicology.
9
@nolongeradoc
"....testing for flurofentanyl (the body's principal metabolite of fentanyl)..."
Seems strange to me. I know of no case in which a metabolite is larger that the molecule being metabolized. Flurofentanyl is normal fentanyl with the *addition* of a fluorine atom in the para position of the benzene ring attached to the amine-bridge nitrogen of the piperidine. How/where the body gets the fluorine atom is something else I do not quite understand.
2
There are plenty of drug metabolites that are larger than the original drug. One of the main pathways used to metabolize compounds in our lifers involves conjugating compounds to ingested chemicals. Obviously this is very much besides the point of the story...
as new [natural or artificial] drugs seem to be
appearing daily and spread faster than wildfire,
the ultimate question seems to be:
what, i.e. WHAT causes such high levels of global DEMAND?
apart from the issue of pain relief, what social and/or economic
problems become more bearable under "the influence"?
and who, WHO has in interest in [not] solving such problems?
29
@°julia eden Good point, Julia. I remember the author Rudolfo Anaya saying that the drug problems would never be fixed as long as officials very high up in governments of both (many?) countries were benefitting from the profits. Here in the US, the benefits may not necessarily be in the form of direct cash payments: large campaign contributions would also suffice.
4
as new [natural or artificial] drugs seem to be
appearing daily and spread faster than wildfire,
the ultimate question seems to be:
what, i.e. WHAT causes such high levels of global DEMAND?
apart from the issue of pain relief, what social and/or economic
problems become more bearable under "the influence"?
and who, i.e. WHO has in interest in [not] solving such problems?
3
As an MD, I still wonder, that the drug problem is apparently only being addressed as illegal production, trade or consumption.
Why do so many (and often very young) people turn to this consumption ?
I think our western societies need to figure this out and react as democracies should do.
At the end, drug has a demand, eliminating this would resume or at least drastically reduce the criminal forces and their power.
I feel deeply sorry for our societies do not target the right problem.
Smoking causes cancer, we spent much time and resources fighting cancer. Preventing smoking came much to late in this epidemic. We now fight drugs and do nothing about the social reasons leading to its consumption.
248
@Dino excellent point!
4
@Dino ... As a relative of someone who is addicted to a dangerous drug, I too have asked myself why a person would begin using---especially an intelligent person. I can think of a few reasons: pain (physical or emotional); boredom; not wanting to disappoint or offend the person who offers the drug; curiosity, combined with either overconfidence in one's ability to control use of the drug or ignorance of the damage it can do; hating the life one is living and wanting to escape it. Education might be the answer to a couple of these causes, but not all of them.
5
@Dino we do nothing about the causes of drug use because the people who control our society are the primary beneficiaries of massive wealth disparity, the worst the country has ever seen, which is one of the root causes of the epidemic. Just look at the Sackler family which was willing to kill as many people as it took for them to obtain massive wealth. We know why this epidemic wasn’t stopped but don’t want to acknowledge we do.
10
History never repeats exactly, but it rhymes. When the Qing Chinese government asked the British to stop its merchants from smuggling opium (The East India Company, which was largely owned by the British government and had monopoly on China trade, cultivated the opium in India and used smugglers such as Jardine Matheson to transport the drugs the last few miles because opium was illegal in China), the response from the British was that opium was illegal in Britain, but not illegal to trade in foreign countries. They also said that the problem was one of demand, and if the Chinese did not want it, there would have been no smuggling. When the Chinese government played hard ball and arrested the smugglers, the British sent their navy and fought two opium wars. The end result was legalisation of the drug by force as a condition of surrender, opening of several free trade ports, and of course the transfer of Hong Kong to the British as a crown colony. Ironically, legalisation of the drug encouraged much cheaper local production, and killed the import of British/Indian opium.
With this historical background, some people in China probably feel that they have no obligation to stop the export of, what they see as, chemical raw materials. There is just so much distrust in the intentions of Westerners in the Chinese psyche that it makes any kind of cooperation difficult.
233
@Erica Chan
Global capitalism.... China became a powerhouse because AMERICAN CEOs moved US jobs and manufacturing over there because it's cheaper. No reason fentanyl can't be made in the USA or aspirin or whatever. HOWEVER, in an international labor market un der the current definition of capitalism it's cheaper to use enslaved labor in other countries. (People are so poor they cannot quit.) If we had actual jobs aka hope here for kids like these perhaps, they would not be doing heroin. (Nor the new pot that smells like dead skunks and frankly should be illegal to smoke in the street!)
If it is known that 50% was coming in thru one USPSpostal branch than it should have been easy to eize the merchandise and arrest those who had ordered it.
13
@Erica Chan :
thank you for this reminder!
people around the world have many reasons to distrust
"the west" - given that they experience betrayal, abuse exploitation ... to this very day.
17
I might go further and say that the Chinese are feeling schadenfreude.
11
Thank you so much for this article, and for representing people who use substances in a human and compassionate way. RIP Bailey.
27
Here in Europe Oxycodone and fentanyl are still prescribed full speed ahead.
Just recently my GP offered to give me fentanyl to assist with arthritic pain. I was already using Tramadol alone and had to fend her off with a firm no.
As an expat American, I have found Europe behind the US in many areas particularly in taking precautions for drug addiction and vaping.
12
@Michael Kittle
Can't speak for France but the use of medicinal fentanyl in the UK is VERY strictly controlled - and rarely seen outside the the terminal care clinic setting.
UK regulations on the deployment of most drugs of misuse and addiction - including benzodiazepines like Xanax - are FAR stricter and more comprehensive than in the US. Yes, oxycodone is available here but never became a problem because of adequate controls.
17
"The agency responsible for overseeing production of drugs and detecting malfeasance in China is understaffed and overwhelmed..."
.
Implicit in this part of the story is the American assumption that a government agency in CCP-led China would work hard, or work at all, to stop fentanyl from being shipped to Americans. Our DEA certainly would. But like so many of our other assumptions about China under the CCP, that one may be naive.
.
It's hard for Americans to fathom this, but since the early 1990s, the "history" that is taught in China, and the propaganda that pervades the media, is that the imperialist US is the enemy. The CCP have been waging a multiple-front war against us for decades. Flooding our cities with fentanyl is one of those fronts.
101
@West Coaster
And given the history, can you entirely blame them?
@West Coaster I wonder if Lebron James will keep defending the Chinese market now since he was "scheduled one" to make a "brick" of money from China?
1
@West Coaster I completely agree with the naiveté on display with regards to China and their role in the drug epidemic. I don't understand why our journalists continue to make excuses like "differences in culture, language and mission..." for the clearly negligent behavior of the Chinese authorities in this story: they arrested and quickly released the main criminal!
6
Recently there have calls for tech companies to end encrypted messaging. Government agencies complain that secure end to end encryption enables criminals to conduct business without the risk of surveillance.
Going Dark they call it.
The forest of corporate services which exists to hide,deflect and obfuscate business responsibilities is the real eye opening aspect of this investigation.
It seems that corporate secrecy and the dark markets that arises are perfectly acceptable to governments at state federal and international levels but individuals who communicate securely are a threat which needs intrusive expansion in government surveillance.
17
Great piece! Stories like these ensure a future for “print” media and serve as a high-bar for newspaper men and women to strive for.
We live in a western world where anonymity is so precious to us that we move mountains to make it happen. That’s a good thing but it’s also a bad thing as we see here in this story quite clearly.
We need to add more protections to people’s lives when it comes to free speech rights but we also need ensure the identity of where free speech comes from because we are enduring a similar epidemic to the drug problem and that epidemic is all things fake: products, services, information and, yes, sometimes even news. Fake can be dangerous!
Gone should be the ability to send anything without a clear path to its point of origin. That means putting a stamp on a letter should be impossible without a tracking system behind it.
Real people, Real deeds. Real responsibility!
42
@William Perrigo
That was close to the system in use there in Germany in the 1930's and through to the end of WW2.
No anonymity, full accountability, Real people, real people, real responsibility. It was very effective too. Not a lot of people objected much (not for long) to anything the gov't there did.
Of course things fell apart after a while. I wonder why! Such a good system!
2
It is people like Alex Palmer and the DEA that gives me hope for a better tomorrow. An exhaustive article to produce for sure. Thank you for being part of the solution. This is a cultural problem and always has been. Money, politics and the desire to feel good fast make our drug and alcohol problem seemingly impossible to grasp and solve. There is hardly a family in the United Staes that doesn't have a member in trouble. Together we can find a solution but it must be a priority.
88
@Daniel Wells
The DEA are on a goose chase. The government could distribute the drugs for free and get rid of the agency if we wanted to actually fix the issue.
3
It's been awhile since I've read a story this compelling, given my recent internet-induced short attention span. The story holds more meaning due to a situation in my previous community in which a young adult man was convicted of distributing fentanyl. He claimed during the trial that he thought he was "helping people". Evidently the court didn't buy that explanation, and handed him a lengthy prison sentence.
69
@Limbo Saliana It's a convenient rationalization, and probably does help some some people at times, so easy for the seller to believe. And, the dollars involved are mind-boggling! But putting away these small-time dealers is like playing whack-a-mole, because every time one is put away, 2 or 3 more pop up!
3
This is excellent journalism. A clear and cogent command of the facts but written with such sensitivity and humanity. Journalism that fosters an understanding of illicit drug use, the channels of supply in our country, and the trajectory of addiction, is a powerful part of working toward a solution. Remembering the precious humanity of every single person who dies from addiction, though, is essential in creating a sense of urgency and common purpose in finding a solution. Every death from drugs should be thought of as a tragic loss for all of us in a caring society.
256
Very important story, and well researched! Another reason why fentanyl is so dangerous that, unlike for heroin, morphine and other opioids,
naloxone spray (Narcan) may not be able to reverse the respiratory arrest that fentanyl can cause. It's original use was limited to patients in intensive care situations in hospitals for good reason; it's probably the only place where fentanyl can be used safely, even under strict professional supervision.
75
@Pete in Downtown, Mine is of course one anecdote but my late huband's pain from terminal metastisized gastric cancer was well controlled at home by fentanyl patches. About a week before he died he agreed to go to a specialized palliative care hospital where they were able to otherwise care for him in ways that were no longer possible at home. I don't dwell on it but I do wonder if he would have agreed to go sooner if his judgement had not been impared by the fentanyl or if he was just in denial.
For me the take aways are:
1. Terminal diagnosis so who cares about addiction.
2. Constant pain relief from the patch unlike with oral opioids where the effect often wears off between doses. This is my tipping point.
3. No one else in the household who would be tempted to abuse the leftovers when the patient is no longer in residence for whatever reason.
3
@carol goldstein
AFter. a family member cared for by Hospice died they scoured the house for possible drugs. However a different family became addicted to Rx opiates, and outside parties were asking if the elderly person was interested in selling their supply. Alerting police did nothing. So some people get far too much, and some suffer because they can't get what they need for actual pain.
1
Incredible journalism! Congrats, Alex Palmer, on this remarkable and eye-opening piece. I can't imagine how much time and research this took.
398
@Northstar5 Hopefully many parents & some potential drug users will take a read of this and decide the risks are just too high but, sadly, I realize that is just my pipe dream, no pun intended.
Even as Sen Sanders kid about the use of pot on national TV, we are head over heels losing people to drugs. Please do not expect much sympathy from countries here in Asia, they have been losing their own wars because of the money rich Americans are willing to pay for drugs. The many policemen recently ambushed and killed in Mexico were ambushed by drug dealers, those drug dealers have untold money from US drug deals.
I don’t know my drug limits, as I have refused to try to find out AND I have forced people to leave my presence when I detected drugs on them. I accept the loss of their friendship as being a price I have to pay to be safe.
12
@WorldPeace24/7 Agreed-if there is a demand for something others will find a way to make money supplying it to them. China is too big and full of billions of people to know what goes on in there. And life has always been "cheap" in Asia so why should they care about America except as a place to make money by supplying all kinds of drugs and other stuff? Once a person sticks these powerful opiates into their body free will is overpowered and the OD risk is very real anytime they use again. Addiction is very real for many-don't say just say no-by then it is too late for many and death awaits. Or HIV and Hep C and staph, etc. Is education enough to stop the demand? I do not know.
3