Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780802127433)

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 U.S. 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.

Author: Ben Westhoff
ISBN-10: 0802127436
ISBN-13: 9780802127433
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Language: English
Published: 09/03/2019
Pages: 356
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.40w x 1.40d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 07/01/2019 pg. 86
Publishers Weekly 07/01/2019
Library Journal 08/01/2019 pg. 112
Kirkus Reviews Fall Preview 08/15/2019 pg. 37
Shelf Awareness 09/03/2019

About the Author
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.