Around 2013 heroin users in the US and other countries suddenly started dying from overdose in previously-unseen numbers. The culprit turned out to be the incredibly potent drug fentanyl and it soon created a massive new wave in the opioid epidemic.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What caused the surge in fentanyl overdoses?
Yeah. It's not like, Hey, this is, we're making the drugs cheaper now. So we're just going to give you a break on this. Uh, there was one study that found between 2013 and 2021, the, um, the percentage of heroin that had fentanyl rose from less than 1% to 40% over, what is that, eight years.
And of course, that's going to lead to a huge number of overdoses because A, you've got these batches that are coming out that the potency has got a pretty dramatic range from one batch to another sometimes. And then people, for a long time, I think the word is finally out now, and we're going to talk about that a little bit later, but
people that were heroin users thought they were getting heroin and knew how much heroin to take safely.
Yeah, and one reason why is because these dealers were saying, if I sell you heroin mixed with fentanyl, I have to use less heroin because it's going to be just as potent or more potent, but I can charge you heroin prices even though I'm paying way less for the fentanyl that I'm using here. And yeah, people were caught by surprise. The fact that it was duplicitous
is just awful because it's like, hey, good luck getting acclimated to this. It's going to be a rough transition. But if you look at it from a business standpoint, the rollout of fentanyl into the American and European drug supplies, it had terrible marketing. Like it had zero marketing.
It was just all of a sudden there, people started dying and it took the authorities investigating what the heck was going on for people to figure out that it was fentanyl. That's how it was introduced. It was just so reckless and I mean, I'm talking about heroin dealers being even more reckless than they normally are. That's what happened with fentanyl being introduced. It just suddenly popped up.
No one said anything about it first.
Yeah, and by the way, when I said safely do heroin, I hope I'm clear that doing heroin is never safe. I just meant heroin users would know how much they can take without overdosing.
Right, yeah.
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Chapter 2: How does fentanyl compare to other opioids?
market, so much so that it's like, just don't do drugs. It's too dangerous because of the presence of fentanyl. I think that holds. And I think this supports that thesis a In Sinaloa, the Sinaloa cartel has a ban on selling fentanyl in Sinaloa. Punishable by death.
So if you're a drug dealer in Sinaloa and the Sinaloa cartel catches you selling fentanyl in their state, in Mexico, where they're supplying the rest of the world with fentanyl, they'll kill you. I think that says just about everything you need to know about fentanyl.
Yeah, for sure. Should we take another break? Mm-hmm. All right, we'll be back and talk about punishment and harm reduction right after this. It's sufficient.
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