It's Not Just Fentanyl In Illicit Drugs — What's In Online Meds Like Ozempic?
Transparency kits check for deadly adulterants in pharmaceuticals and hormones sold online
Sponsored Content by Ben Westhoff
My book Fentanyl, Inc. was originally supposed to be about molly. I conceived it in the mid-2010s, when “molly” — the updated term for “ecstasy” — was all the rage.
Miley Cyrus extolled molly’s virtues in an October, 2013 Rolling Stone article. “Hollywood is a coke town, but weed is so much better. And molly, too,” she said. “Those are happy drugs – social drugs. They make you want to be with friends.”
But what was molly? People at music festivals believed it was pure MDMA, but that seemed odd to me. Users were dipping their fingers into plastic bags of white powder “molly” and licking it off, repeating the process every ten minutes or so. Some would snort it. But back in the day the MDMA users I knew simply took an ecstasy pill, and would be happily “rolling” for the whole night.
It wasn’t until I arrived to a party in Denver that I learned the truth. The party was known as the “Funky Formal,” and held in an old Capital Hill gothic church retrofitted for concerts, put on by the harm reduction group DanceSafe. Attendees were encouraged to let their “freak flags fly,” and indeed they did, arriving in giant boots, fluorescent hairstyles, fishnet leggings, and capes.
I felt a little square, but no matter; I was there to meet a mystery man named Adam Auctor. Auctor and his company, called Bunk Police, were at the forefront of the drug checking movement. Long before anyone was talking about fentanyl test strips, he was finding out what was actually in people’s ecstasy and other drugs. He’d purchased kits used by police to check drugs found at busts, and then reverse-engineered them to make them himself.
Auctor and I met at a trendy restaurant in an up-and-coming neighborhood called Five Points, and I was a bit taken aback by his appearance. He was very tall and carried a mysterious, intense air, which went along with the fact that — because his company skirted the edges of legality — he declined to reveal his real name. (Adam Auctor was a pseudonym). After we were seated, he ordered a craft beer.
He talked to me about Bunk Police. He portrayed it as both a business – selling drug-checking kits – and a harm reduction organization, focused on keeping kids safe. His efforts had brought him all over the world, and he routinely interacted with big time drug traffickers, in order to understand what they did.
Auctor said there was very little actual MDMA in most “molly.” Just like the “ecstasy” floating around, it was largely adulterated with new, unknown chemicals. In fact, he explained, a whole new crop of chemicals had recently come onto the drug landscape. Some were benign, many were problematic, but the most dangerous of them all — by far — was fentanyl. It would kill more people than we could possibly imagine, he predicted.
For me it was an a-ha moment, and I immediately re-cast my ecstasy book to be about fentanyl instead. Since illicit fentanyl was mostly produced in China, and no journalist had ever investigated one of these labs, Auctor and I began hatching a plan for me to go there undercover.
I couldn’t have written Fentanyl, Inc. without him, and Auctor has remained a tremendous resource over the years. Meanwhile Bunk Police has grown into a huge operation, selling kits around the globe and saving countless lives. Auctor has poured a million dollars of his own money into a substance reaction library, so users can distinguish between safe drugs and adulterated ones.
These days, however, it’s not just recreational drugs that are poisoning users. It’s often adulterated pharmaceutical pills and seemingly-legitimate medications and hormones sold online. After all, the same Chinese labs making fentanyl products are also making knock-off versions of drugs like Ozempic and Cialis, as well as anabolic steroids and hormones.
For this reason, Bunk Police’s mission is expanding. I believe strongly in it, which is why I’m consulting for his new company, called Transparency, which will serve as the parent company for Bunk Police.
“Bunk Police has spent over a decade building trust and expertise in the field of harm reduction,” Auctor says in the release announcing the new company. “Transparency is the natural evolution of our mission, allowing us to empower more individuals and safeguard public health in a new and critical way.”
Transparency will soon be releasing at-home drug testing kits for any substance — not just illicit drugs, but prescription pills bought from unregulated online pharmacies.
These fake prescription pills, which have already killed countless Americans, include chemicals for weight loss (like Ozempic), for body building, and hormones for the trans community. Transparency’s kits to test these chemicals— portable, affordable, and shelf-stable — will be available not just online, but in pharmacies, convenience stores, and head shops.
Whereas Bunk Police (which still operates) primarily courted festival-goers and recreational users, Transparency focuses on the much-larger group of everyday consumers who buy online meds.
I got a chance to meet the Transparency crew at a recent retreat, and they’re a whip-smart group. Other new projects they’re rolling out include:
1) Their new lab service Transparency Testing, which allows you to mail in your drugs to check them for safety.
2) Their new AI-powered Transparency App, a harm reduction tool allowing you to get quick answers to thousands of questions about drug use and testing.
3) Chromatic Reactions, a beautiful coffee table book that makes drug-checking reagent reactions into art, and is available for pre-order.
This is my first venture into consulting, and it’s been great working with these folks. Auctor and I are kindred spirits, and like him I believe that drug-checking kits shouldn’t be niche products, but rather should be as ubiquitous as Covid-19 tests, to help everyone figure out what they’re putting into their bodies.
Any chemical you can imagine is available on the internet these days, but this vast marketplace is almost entirely unregulated. It’s comforting to know that Transparency is stepping in to help make sense of it all.