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You’ll receive occasional dispatches about drugs, hip-hop, or both, and have access to my full archive. Here are examples.

Ask a Fentanyl Saleswoman: I spent over a year investigating a Chinese chemical company called Yuancheng, which sells fentanyl ingredients. My expose made international news and inspired my book Fentanyl, Inc. Kicking it all off was the conversation I had with this saleswoman.

Does Future Have Blood On His Hands? Future’s 2017 song “Mask Off,” glorifies Percocets, which are often cut with fentanyl on the black market, and have killed countless kids. The song has gone 9x platinum, and has 1.8 billion Spotify spins. No one has had more cultural impact rapping about deadly drugs than Future.

Alcohol, Not Drugs, Is Our Biggest Problem: I believed as I got older people would stop pressuring me to drink. In my fraternity, I never really fit in until that time I threw up in my residence hall water fountain. In my twenties I was accused of teetotaling while working for alternative-weekly newspapers, some of which had staff meetings in bars. Even recently, after finishing a workout with my running club, I was pressured to drink a watery bee

My Joe Rogan Experience: Rogan’s hideout is top secret. His booker warned that I couldn’t take any photos or “geo-tag the location in social media posts.” Sort of a cross between a man cave and an art gallery, the studio sits inside a windowless bunker, nondescript from the outside, about the size of a small airplane hangar.”

The Omar Little Of the Dark Web: I received an email from an anonymous source: “I have been hacking and extorting Research Chemical companies for almost 3 years now.” This was about the most badass thing I could imagine. Over the following months we continued chatting over email, and he opened up about his life.

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