The Lethal Business of Synthetic Drugs Like Fentanyl
A new book shows that the shift to opioids manufactured internationally in labs has created a deadly drugs crisis
In 2014, two 18-year-old roommates in Grand Forks, North Dakota, named Bailey Henke and Kain Schwandt, were unraveling from opioid addictions. Over Christmas vacation, they took a road trip, trying to kick their habits. They brought along Suboxone, a drug that helps ease withdrawal. And it seemed to work. They both came home clean.
Within days, though, they relapsed. A friend procured a dozen grams of heroin and a gram of fentanyl — both bought from the now defunct darknet site Evolution. This fentanyl wasn’t the pharmaceutical-grade version that had been around for decades. Rather, it was made thousands of miles away, in a Chinese lab run by a chemist named Jian Zhang. Shortly after ingesting the drug, Henke slumped over, and suffered a fatal overdose.
Henke’s death sparked an international investigation that led to 32 arrests, including that of his darknet dealer. But Zhang, the chemical manufacturer based in Shanghai, called the “kingpin” of the drug, was off-limits — China officials said he didn’t break any of their laws. Fentanyl abuse, they insisted, was an American crisis — not theirs.
