The Media Hype Over Fentanyl is Overblown
Rarely cited data show that most street fentanyl is no more powerful than heroin.
It seems that every time you see a story about a fentanyl bust, authorities claim that they’ve seized enough fentanyl to kill millions of people. The natural question arises: if the fentanyl is so powerful that every lowlife drug smuggler can carry millions of lethal doses in their glovebox, then how could there possibly be any opioid addicts still alive in the United States?
A simple examination of the data from the DEA reveals why the press releases from law enforcement agencies don’t match up with the reality on the ground.
When cops seize powder of pills from a trafficker, they often indicate positive for fentanyl on field expedient reagent test kits, and then law enforcement agencies say it was enough to kill millions of people given the assumption that it’s as pure as the pharmaceutical version. But it’s not.
The DEA reports say that Mexican fentanyl, even when sold in so-called “pure” powder form, is in fact only 7-12% pure. By contrast, generic pharmaceutical drugs have a chemical purity of at least 98%. This lack of purity makes sense, considering that most Mexican fentanyl is cooked in makeshift outdoor labs.
How about the even scarier fentanyl shipped in from ostensibly professional chemical factories in China? The DEA found that fewer than 1% of fentanyl seizures from parcel shipments into the US from chemical companies in China had purities that exceeded the 90 percent mark (just 5 out of 508). And so it seems the “Fentanyl China” craze that’s taken over in the media is more hype than reality.
Even the purest of street fentanyl is usually roughly tantamount to so-called “China White” heroin, which itself has been the subject of waves of hype from the media and government over the past 50 years.
All the hype over fentanyl results in increased budgets for law enforcement and social services agencies and provides clicks for their media collaborators. And of course, it’s much easier to point to China and blame fentanyl for increases in opioid deaths than it is to look within and deal with the massive decrease in social mobility faced by Americans over the past 25 years.
About the Author: Jacob Wohl is the Creator of Predator DC and host of The Jacob Wohl Show.