I hear all these stories about people overdosing due to not knowing they were consuming/ingesting fentanyl, and I was just wondering why this occurs so often.
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Manufacturers cut fentanyl into drugs that are more expensive but less potent so the buyer still gets high, but at a cheaper cost to the manufacturer.
the drug trade encompasses everything, and fentanyl is a popular drug right now. the potency for it’s weight is astronomical, which makes it extremely easy for contamination to occur. doses of fentanyl in medical settings are in the MICROGRAM range (mcg)
I watched a show where they interviewed a drug
Dealer in NY and he said he would randomly lace a bag with fentanyl knowing the person would die. He did that so that everyone on the street would think his stuff was the best stuff. Such a price of shit.
So there are a few ways but basically all of them come down to drug dealers not exactly following pharmaceutical best practices. Probably the most common is cross contamination. Someone might be handling fentanyl and heroin for example in the same area and some leftover fentanyl gets in the heroin. Another super common way is just mixing. Again someone might be handling fentanyl and another substance that looks similar and just mix them on accident. Final way is cutting. If I add a little bit of fentanyl to your heroin itll hit a lot harder so I can also mix in some cheap shit without you noticing the loss of quality. Basically nobody is deliberately adding fentanyl to their products to kill people, they want you to buy more and dead customers cant spend any more, theyre just morons who have gotten their hands on a very powerful medication and dont handle it properly
Usually by accident.
What generally happens is that the people selling the drugs don’t use dedicated tools/tables for fentanyl and some fentanyl residue gets on the other drugs when they’re sorting/weighing it or whatever.
This wouldn’t be an issue if it weren’t for how ridiculously potent fentanyl is. A small amount of residue/dust can be enough to kill someone, so if the dealer weighs out some fentanyl then some cocaine, then unless they did a deep clean in between you now have cocaine with a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl in it.
Right now in the US heroin isnt really on the streets. A lot of the supply was from pre Taliban Afghanistan. There is still heroin but most of that is cut with fentanyl or is really just fentanyl. This is done with fentanyl since its the same class as heroin (opioids) just cheaper and more potent. In order to cut heroin with fentanyl it needs to be measured very precisely and electronic scales are used. These scales may also be used to weigh drugs like coke and there is a big cross contamination risk when weighing multiple drugs on the same scale. Almost no one is putting fent in coke on purpose but “street pharmacists” aren’t properly trained and dont have the best equipment so cross contamination happens.
You need MUCH less to get the same or stronger high than the drug they are cutting.
for example, as per the DEA, 2mg (thats like 10-15 GRAINS of salt) is a potentially lethal dose to majority of humans (depending on their weight).
the LD50 (the dose required to kill 50% of the tested population of the members. meaning ~~100% of the time, ~~50% of the tested subjects will die) for fentanyl is unknown. but fentanyl LD50 for rats is 3mg/kg, 1mg/kg for cats, 14mg/kg in dogs, 0.03mg/kg in monkeys (by IV).
in comparison, the LD50 for cocaine is ~~95mg/kg. meaning fentanyl essentially has the same potential lethal dosage for having 47.5x LESS of the substance
as you can probably guess, many of the lowtime drug dealers will not know this knowledge. nor will they be careful in being exact, or even worry about cross contamination (with something that has such low potential lethal dosage, cross contamination is a huge issue. even 1 additional grain of fentanyl can mean the person lives or dies).
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