the Fentanyl age - provenance, power and the politics of control

[Murphy]

Willing to guess that certain members among you will have have bought bucket sized hampers of drugs at least once, so indulge me

For utter force of destruction, fentanyl seems destined to serve as a low point for a clear nadir in both unenforceable drug policy and compound strength. Its presence is increasing, profits are vast for ltd distribution organisational efficacy, yet no amount of deaths deter its core user base which in turn is growing in chaotic regional hotspots

Whereas heroin has a prolonged social history, oxy has been in clear public view for just over a decade. From development to market to blackmarket, its reputation for strength preceded it (and it is a warmth of unimaginable strength and tenderness even at 100mgs). Fentanyl’s rise up the chain is more hazy in provenance. Without oxy the demand for such savagely hardcore nods wouldn’t exist and the diversity of illicit source labs, who produces and who distributes nation to nation is murkier still

If ever a super-downer justified a nadir for probable deep-state supply intervention, investment and involvement, with a control yield similar to that of bomb munitions, it’s fentanyl. Is it all cartels and triads, or are more malignant domestic forces at work? Someone or something is coining it. Penny for Dissensus thoughts. All the ingredients fit - a highly potent synthetic drug noted for force of oblivion (particularly if combined with other easily sourced compounds), a myriad of shadowy distribution nexuses, the power such profit making networks creates and the finance structures required to clean income

Rarely investigated, audited/mapped for profits and respective underlying finance systems (who washes and launders $/£/€), who organises its wholesale retail value and the corruption of key customs teams with entire units compromised/exploited and raking it in, fentanyl has changed the world of drugs permanently. It may be one of the more perfect drugs ever invented, a golden ratio of nod oblivion to unit of exchange and as such might not be improved upon, which in itself is staggering

Conversely, levels of risk for increasing numbers of people who don’t take fentanyl and have no wish to have increased, because cross contamination amounts needed to cause physiological harm are minuscule. In such contexts I’m almost glad the drugs I took didnt overlap with its expansive growth. Scotland leads drug deaths in Europe, the US clears 80-100,00 a year where a considerable % will involve fentanyl, Iran and Afghanistan continue to rinse opiates and across vast swathes of the world the shift to fentanyl grows

Any thoughts gang? This can’t have occurred by chance

 

[versh]

I haven't seen much beyond gossip and speculation. The American line is that the bulk of the stuff in the US originates from China via Mexico. The Mexican cartels import the ingredients then manufacture it themselves.

 

[william_kent]

I'm not into stocks and shares, but if I was I'd guess that shares in whoever makes Narcan might be good bet for an investment opportunity

 

[catalog]

i've got a horror story about this - mate who had some with a mate of his (someone i don't know) and that guy died. mate went to jail for a bit, he's out now, all good. but yeah, this was several years ago, i never heard of it, and remember googling to see that it was the one that did Prince. Is that right?

and now i've got another mate who told me when we last saw him that he'd tried oxy... so i couldn't sleep that night and talked to my wife about it, she ended up ringing him to say stay away.

downers are very problematic aren't they... the feeling i get is that people are onto these cos it's about having a big saturday night on the chang but then you wanna be able to sleep? but it's obviously a very difficult thing to judge.

we had this thread on xanax a while back didn't we.

it feels very un-UK, in the same way crystal meth has never caught on here, but obviously you are seeing the patients wash.

Scary stuff - i won't go near it.

 

[versh]

One of my mum's friends was prescribed fentanyl patches due to a spinal condition. It was the first I'd heard of it outside of drug death horror stories and I was a bit taken aback, but there's an NHS page for it and it's much older than I'd previously thought.

 

[william_kent]

One of my mum's friends was prescribed fentanyl patches due to a spinal condition. It was the first I'd heard of it outside of drug death horror stories and I was a bit taken aback, but there's an NHS page for it and it's much older than I'd previously thought.

first I heard of it was a story in the Manchester Evening News, this was years ago, long before it became a household name, some 16 year died of it at a house party - they were abusing time release patches intended for palliative care for the terminally ill ( I think the trick is to scrape the grey stuff off and snort or inject it according to taste, but even the colour looks grim ) ( this was before oxy was even a thing )

 

[Mr. Tea]

One of my mum's friends was prescribed fentanyl patches due to a spinal condition. It was the first I'd heard of it outside of drug death horror stories and I was a bit taken aback, but there's an NHS page for it and it's much older than I'd previously thought.

Yeah, my mum was prescribed some a few years ago for pain after a bad bout of shingles.

 

[Mr. Tea]

first I heard of it was a story in the Manchester Evening News, this was years ago, long before it became a household name, some 16 year died of it at a house party - they were abusing time release patches intended for palliative care for the terminally ill ( I think the trick is to scrape the grey stuff off and snort or inject it according to taste, but even the colour looks grim ) ( this was before oxy was even a thing )

JFC. When I was that age, going out into the garden for a spliff was excitement enough.

 

[catalog]

"This is the North, we do things different here" etc

 

[Mr. Tea]

"This is the North, we do things different here" etc

Yeah alright, Ned Stark.

 

[catalog]

Manchester still the site of genuine innovation etc

 

[Leo]

had some minor surgery awhile back and when I later saw the procedure results, it listed fentanyl as part of the anesthesia. can't say I felt any sort of high, but an hour-long procedure seemed to be over in about five minutes.

 

[versh]

Some of the more conspiracy minded have suggested a link between the rise of fentanyl in America and the US backing away from Afghanistan.

 

[catalog]

it's sort of interesting to think about this... like the move away from "analogue" weed in late 90s/early 2000s to skunk grown under lamps in this country turned me and a lot of people i know well off it....

and the USA being in such close proximity to south america which is the only place in the world that coke is made (?) and which is almost a too perfect drug for the USA, with it's intense individualism...

only makes sense to make your own heroin to come down from the party.

 

[versh]

it's sort of interesting to think about this... like the move away from "analogue" weed in late 90s/early 2000s to skunk grown under lamps in this country turned me and a lot of people i know well off it....

Apparently a big chunk of the Mexican cartels' business is synthetic stuff like meth and fentanyl because you can make it more or less anywhere and don't have to worry about growing anything or having the land or conditions to do so.

 

[yyaldrin]

is fentanyl the stuff you can get over the counter or am i mixing it up with something else?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

If ever a super-downer justified a nadir for probable deep-state supply intervention, investment and involvement, with a control yield similar to that of bomb munitions, it’s fentanyl. Is it all cartels and triads, or are more malignant domestic forces at work? Someone or something is coining it. Penny for Dissensus thoughts. All the ingredients fit - a highly potent synthetic drug noted for force of oblivion (particularly if combined with other easily sourced compounds), a myriad of shadowy distribution nexuses, the power such profit making networks creates and the finance structures required to clean income

Rarely investigated, audited/mapped for profits and respective underlying finance systems (who washes and launders $/£/€), who organises its wholesale retail value and the corruption of key customs teams with entire units compromised/exploited and raking it in, fentanyl has changed the world of drugs permanently. It may be one of the more perfect drugs ever invented, a golden ratio of nod oblivion to unit of exchange and as such might not be improved upon, which in itself is staggering

Conversely, levels of risk for increasing numbers of people who don’t take fentanyl and have no wish to have increased, because cross contamination amounts needed to cause physiological harm are minuscule. In such contexts I’m almost glad the drugs I took didnt overlap with its expansive growth. Scotland leads drug deaths in Europe, the US clears 80-100,00 a year where a considerable % will involve fentanyl, Iran and Afghanistan continue to rinse opiates and across vast swathes of the world the shift to fentanyl grows

Any thoughts gang? This can’t have occurred by chance

let me understand the timeline/chain of causality

Oxy is - disastrously, for everyone besides the Sackler family - approved by the FDA in 95. its recreational use explodes, creating huge demand for more intense opioid highs/lows. eventually the FDA steps back in to, belatedly, try to limit the damage by making it harder to use oxy recreationally. as oxy use declines (slightly), fentanyl - which has been around since the mid-60s and in illicit use since the 70s - abuse explodes, primarily based on manufacture in China, imported to the US via Mexican cartels, although at the same time, fentanyl is being aggressively pushed by a handful of American pharmaceutical companies a la Purdue. American opioid deaths per year have risen something like 1000% in the last 20 years.

tbh it seems like a pretty standard continuation of the drug trade of the last ~50 years, intensified by market dynamics and basic greed. the profits from cocaine and heroin distribution have toppled governments and created multiple quasi-failed states. I guess you could see it as an easy line of attack for the CCP - plausible deniability and they don't even have to proactively do anything, just decline to shut down large-scale synthetic opioid production, which in and of itself isn't illicit. the cartels and American demand will do the rest.

in re the deep state or whoever, my question would be the usual one: cui bono? and how? the argument for CIA involvement in drug trafficking has always been anti-communism (undermining regimes and/or allying with traffickers against communists) and later anti-Islamism, and more conspiratorially, to undermine Black radicalism by cutting the heart out of its power base. who would be benefiting from an explosion in opioid addiction and death? the people profiting from it obviously, but what would the deep state motive be?

my random guy on the Internet guess would be that synthetic opioid production is basically another bargaining chip in the pre-cold war between American and Chinese govts, rather than anything explicitly conspiratorial, and market forces do the rest.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

also, random tangent but interesting I guess

the gas that killed 130 hostages in the Moscow theater siege (i.e. what Nolan ripped for the opening scene of Tenet) was a fentanyl derivative

the Russian authorities decided that some level of fentanyl deaths was preferable to a lesser agent failing to incapacitate the hostage takers

and so wound up killing ~1/5 of the hostages, even with doctors on hand to administer naxalone ASAP

another one for you parapolitics types

 

[versh]

I guess you could see it as an easy line of attack for the CCP - plausible deniability and they don't even have to proactively do anything, just decline to shut down large-scale synthetic opioid production, which in and of itself isn't illicit. the cartels and American demand will do the rest.

I've seen people invoke some sort of reverse opium war in this context, but it's never been fleshed out beyond someone just saying that and seems a bit clumsy.

in re the deep state or whoever, my question would be the usual one: cui bono? and how? the argument for CIA involvement in drug trafficking has always been anti-communism (undermining regimes and/or allying with traffickers against communists) and later anti-Islamism, and more conspiratorially, to undermine Black radicalism by cutting the heart out of its power base. who would be benefiting from an explosion in opioid addiction and death? the people profiting from it obviously, but what would the deep state motive be?

The death + addiction aspect could just be collateral with the motive lying further up the chain. That and profit's a strong enough motive for anyone, really. I doubt those guys can ever have too many slush funds.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

The death + addiction aspect could just be collateral with the motive lying further up the chain. That and profit's a strong enough motive for anyone, really. I doubt those guys can ever have too many slush funds.

sure, but as you say it's a strong enough motive for anyone. high-level dealers (and pharmaceutical distributors) here, the cartels, presumably the initial manufacturers in China (or Indian or Myanmar or wherever). it's not a prima facie argument for deep state involvement, at least in a who benefits sense.

obviously that doesn't preclude the suborning of individual agents or even entire agencies by traffickers, but then you're still talking about traffickers pulling the actual strings rather than yunno some sinister deep state cabal.

like, the CIA allying with traffickers in Europe or South American to conduct its primary Cold War mission, fighting communism, makes sense. there's a unique motive that logically aligns with the CIA's goals.