Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Created the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic by Ben Westhoff. Ben is an investigative journalist, speaker, and filmmaker. focused on drugs, culture, and poverty.
In addition, Ben is published in The New York Times, the Library of Congress, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Rolling Stone, Daily Beast, New York, Forbes, and Vice among others.
This is the third book of five that I chose to read to understand the crisis. Since publication, Ben is advising government officials including from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Senate and House members, the staff of America’s embassy in Beijing, and the State Department. As a result, Ben is a featured speaker today at conferences around the country regarding the opioid crisis.
Just when you begin to understand the early days of the opioid crisis, you soon discovery Fentanyl has killed more Americans annually than any other drug in history.
Yet, compared to everyday opioids (including heroine) fentanyl is a synthetic drug — first developed in a European chemistry lab in the late 1950s. While this may surprise many, rogue chemists are playing with molecules creating designer strains in huge amounts. In fact, China is the leading supplier of synthetic fentanyl.