The Fentanyl Apocalypse: Why a Century Old Narcotic Exploded in Popularity Out of Nowhere

In this thought-provoking episode, the hosts delve into the alarming rise of synthetic opioids, specifically focusing on the fentanyl crisis in the United States. They explore the historical context of drug epidemics, drawing parallels between the current crisis and the 1980s crack epidemic. The conversation touches on the origins and manufacturing processes of fentanyl, its potency, and its distribution routes, primarily through Mexican cartels. The hosts also discuss the impact of aggressive pharma marketing on opioid addiction and the subsequent legal actions that shifted drug supply to the black market. They engage in a hypothetical debate about potential solutions, including the controversial idea of government-regulated drug distribution and penal colonies. Throughout, the dialogue is interspersed with humorous personal anecdotes and cultural references, offering a balanced mix of serious analysis and light-hearted commentary. [00:00:00]

Speaker 3: Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. I was, in case you don't just have some idea, but it's eating at the back of my head. And I'm like, you know, I've heard that there's like a, a drug crisis right now, right?

Like I should just like, look at the numbers of that. Because recently I was doing an episode about how the drug crisis in the eighties contributed to, you know, Black poverty and the breakdown of the black family and like, could that be the thing that actually caused it? My hypothesis is actually it's not.

But then I started looking at numbers and I want you to pull up the graph I sent you of drug overdose deaths. Right,

Speaker 2: because I'm I haven't seen the graph yet, but I remember from our kids there was the war on drugs. So I always kind of thought your,

Speaker 3: your background assumption right now. There's not that big of a drug problem

Speaker 2: or that there's always been a drug problem and we're always going to have to fight.

Oh, okay. I'm looking at the graph now. So everything seems kind of like, you know, not trending in a good direction, but not looking [00:01:00] insane. With prescription opioids, just kind of trending up or

Speaker 3: half the

Speaker 2: asthma tope. So to give you

Speaker 3: an idea

Speaker 2: of what happens in 2015 at that point, synthetic opioids,

Speaker 3: because it's interesting for anyone who can't see the graph at 2015, just all of a sudden, synthetic opioid drugs just exploded with the most common one being fentanyl.

Speaker: Well, I guess that means I can get rid of all my hot grandma merch. I'll just donate it to Goodwill. You know what gilf means, right? Yeah. God, I love fentanyl. You said it, pal.

Speaker 3: Onto the scene specifically by now, by 2022. There are 73,654 people dying a year in the United States alone. That's around 200 deaths in the US per day from Fentanyl. It's nearly 70% of all drug overdoses in 2022. And to give you an idea of how much of a rise this is it rose from 2013 to 2022 by [00:02:00] 23, 000%.

Speaker 2: Yeah. No, this, this is insane.

Speaker 6: Sadly, you know what it reminds me of, seeing it? These white folks look exactly like us during the crack epidemic. It's wild because I even have insight into how the white community must have felt watching the black community go through the scourge of crack.

Because I don't care either.

Hang in there, whites. Just say no! What's so hard about that?

Speaker 7: Okay, Shallon and I are going to play out a scenario to make you understand. I will play a drug dealer. The hero of our story! No, not a hero! Bad guy! So, pretend Shallon walks by me on the street. Remember, we say no to drugs. Hey little girl, you want to buy some ecstasy pills?

Speaker 8: No thank you, I only do crack!

No, no, Shallon,

Speaker 7: no! You just say no,

Speaker 2: Like clearly out of nowhere, but what's interesting too about [00:03:00] this graph. I just want to point out to those who are listening. It's not as though out of nowhere, suddenly synthetic opioids in isolation are a big problem. Now they are like by many, many orders of magnitude, a bigger problem than the other.

Drug involved overdose deaths from 1999 to 2020, but even, and this is by far, it's like the second to last of the, the overdose types listed on this graph, graph, but benzodiazepines is, is up. Close to, it's getting close to 10, 000 in 2020, and I just thought benzos were like an eighties thing. So even stuff that I thought had seen its heyday was like gone now lots of people, more than ever, more people than ever are dying from it, it seems.

Speaker 3: If you're looking since 2011 to 2021, and keep in mind it's higher now, there's been a 338 percent rise in drug deaths.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Speaker 3: Wow. And this, like, when I saw this, I was [00:04:00] like, I need to understand what's going on here. Was like, a new drug invented? Was like, by the way, there wasn't. Fentanyl has been around since the 1950s.

Speaker 9: I want To use heroin, but I also want to get stuff done. That's why I reached for Heroin AM, the only non drowsy heroin on the market.

Speaker 10: I would call Time Out to inject black tar heroin, there was almost a stigma about it. But with Heroin AM, I'm almost more alert than if I weren't on heroin.

Speaker 12: Side effects include, it's heroin. So, all that stuff.

Speaker 3: Was it a new production mechanism for the drug? No, no new production mechanism for the drug.

Speaker 13: Like a lot of people, I love to smoke. But my friends and family always make me go outside to do it. So that's why I now use e meth. It's crystal meth, but electronic. And thAt means I can ride the Ice Pony anywhere I want.

Speaker 14: Thanks to E Meth, I can now even smoke inside my favorite restaurant. Excuse me, sir. You can't smoke meth in here. [00:05:00] It's okay. It's electronic.

Speaker 16: I don't care.

Speaker 14: You're in my living room. And you're naked!

Speaker 3: Was it some economic situation that caused the drug to explode? No, no new economic situation. And I was like, maybe it was like a new, Distributor or mechanism of production. Well, what I had read

Speaker 2: before was that it was specifically China flooding the market with synthetic opioids.

Is that it?

Speaker 3: Also not true. No, they're mostly produced in Mexico. In fact, one of the things that did change that led to the explosion of the drug was the main movement of the manufacturing of them from China to Mexico.

Speaker 2: Is Mexico getting them from China? It's, but it's specifically the manufacturer. Sure.

Speaker 3: Mexico is the manufacturer. Mexico does buy some of the precursors from China, but they can likely get the precursors from many other places. China is not the bottleneck here. It is the cartels in Mexico.

Speaker 4: Wow. Okay.

Speaker 3: So, yeah, [00:06:00] it's, it's, it's not China. So it's, it was a mystery to me, which I was going over and it actually took me a while.

Cause it's like, I'm, I'm not going to figure out what actually happened here. And I believe I have figured it out. But. We have to go in to what Fentanyl is first because I didn't really know wha