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

Ben Westhoff

sept 2019 · Atlantic Monthly Press

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A four-year investigation into the world of synthetic drugs—from black market factories to users & dealers to harm reduction activists—and what it revealed.

A deeply human story, Fentanyl, Inc. is the first deep-dive investigation of a hazardous and illicit industry that has created a worldwide epidemic, ravaging communities and overwhelming and confounding government agencies that are challenged to combat it. “A whole new crop of chemicals is radically changing the recreational drug landscape,” writes Ben Westhoff. “These are known as Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS) and they include replacements for known drugs like heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, and marijuana. They are synthetic, made in a laboratory, and are much more potent than traditional drugs” —and all-too-often tragically lethal.

Drugs like fentanyl, K2, and Spice—and those with arcane acronyms like 25i-NBOMe—were all originally conceived in legitimate laboratories for proper scientific and medicinal purposes. Their formulas were then hijacked and manufactured by rogue chemists, largely in China, who change their molecular structures to stay ahead of the law, making the drugs’ effects impossible to predict. Westhoff has infiltrated this shadowy world. He tracks down the little-known scientists who invented these drugs and inadvertently killed thousands, as well as a mysterious drug baron who turned the law upside down in his home country of New Zealand. Westhoff visits the shady factories in China from which these drugs emanate, providing startling and original reporting on how China’s vast chemical industry operates, and how the Chinese government subsidizes it. Poignantly, he chronicles the lives of addicted users and dealers, families of victims, law enforcement officers, and underground drug awareness organizers in the United States and Europe. Together they represent the shocking and riveting full anatomy of a calamity we are just beginning to understand. From its depths, as Westhoff relates, are emerging new strategies that may provide essential long-term solutions to the drug crisis that has affected so many.

“Timely and agonizing. . . . An impressive work of investigative journalism.” —USA Today

“Westhoff explores the many-tentacled world of illicit opioids, from the streets of East St. Louis to Chinese pharmaceutical companies, from music festivals deep in the Michigan woods to sanctioned ‘shooting up rooms’ in Barcelona, in this frank, insightful, and occasionally searing exposé. . . . Westhoff’s well-reported and researched work will likely open eyes, slow knee-jerk responses, and start much needed conversations.” —Publishers Weekly

“Our 25 Favorite Books of 2019” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Best Books of 2019” —Buzzfeed

“Best Nonfiction of 2019” —Kirkus Reviews

“50 Best Books of 2019” —Daily Telegraph

“Best Nonfiction Books of 2019” —Tyler Cowen

“Best Books of 2019” —Yahoo Finance

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Ben Westhoff is an award-winning investigative reporter who writes about culture, drugs, and poverty, and has advised officials at the top levels of government about the fentanyl epidemic. His previous book Original Gangstas is the definitive work about West Coast hip-hop. He came up in the alternative weeklies Riverfront Times and L.A. Weekly and has also written for the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, the Guardian, and Vice.