My understanding is that Anthony Blinken went to China to dissuade them in going in on BRICS as a trade currency, which has the potential to unseat the U.S. Dollar as the world currency. And I’ve never understood blaming China for fentanyl -- I thought the precursors were industrial chemicals that have many uses and are therefore hard to regulate without severely impacting the economy.
Ben Westhoff's book Fentanyl, Inc.- which I plan to purchase- undoubtedly has some detailed information on the precursors and supply chain. But I did a keyword search one night and found that all of the precursors for fentanyl and its analogs have so many other uses in chemical and pharmaceutical manufacture that imposing tight controls on their distribution is practically impossible. And the formula is public, of course, although I doubt that these compounds are easy to manufacture safely without some extra precautions in the final stages.
This is in marked contrast with the case of substances like methamphetamine and LSD, which require uncommon precursors like ephedrine or P-2-P (for meth) or ergotamine tartarate (for LSD)...although it's obvious that increased oversight over the precursor supply chain has not been sufficient to curtail the manufacture of either of those substances. Really, we're talking about finished products with a very high profit margin per yield; and chemistry being what it is, if precursors can't be purchased, they can be manufactured from scratch. When the substance in question is effective at 5-20 micrograms, like carfentanil, the quantity of chemicals required to produce a million "dosage units" is...not very much.
I'd venture that currently the biggest impediment to production of fentanyl and its analogs in clandestine labs within the US is finding wholesale and distribution channels. The Mexican organized crime networks really have managed to achieve something close to monopoly control over the wholesale street market in illicit opioids from coast to coast. So unless a chemist has worked out a deal with one of those syndicates, they have no one to sell their product to.
Thanks both of you for your comments. You're right that many fentanyl precursors, and especially pre-precursors, have other legitimate uses. What the US wants China to do is make sure chemical companies don't just ship them to anyone, that they check the credentials of, say, the receivers in Mexico before sending them over. And the biggest reason more precursors aren't produced in the US, Mexico, or other countries is cost: China does it most cheaply. India is on their tail.
"the biggest reason more precursors aren't produced in the US, Mexico, or other countries is cost: China does it most cheaply. India is on their tail."
Speaking as a non-ideologue who's quite aware of the advantages of independent markets and private enterprises in production of consumer goods, I've arrived at the position that pharmaceutical manufacture should be nationalized.
Considered as a consumer good, drugs are an exception that's practically unique: they're generic chemical compounds (or, occasionally, mixtures of those compounds.) The researchers and research teams responsible for producing new compounds should be rewarded for their efforts on the basis of an improvement in patient outcomes. But it's a field where patents should not apply. This is medicine and pharmacology- about healing, not a cash cow. At minimum, there should be a public option (I've heard that the state of California is pursuing in-house manufacture of prescription drugs.) Domestic production is much more amenable to effective oversight and quality control.
(By contrast, I prefer a much more limited form of public health insurance that emphasizes major medical expenses, catastrophic coverage, and long-term care rather than the kind that maintains all-pervading medical corporatization of physician care and medical tests. I've had physicians who charged patients on a sliding income scale, and also found that cash visits and lab tests are typically a fraction of the amount billed to insurance companies. I'd rather pay my doctors and routine medical tests directly. I'd like to see a renewed emphasis on personal doctor-patient relationships- and medical privacy. But that's a different issue...)
It's beyond obvious that the statistics touting seizures of "50,000 lbs." of fentanyl are including the inert ingredients used as filler for the most commonly seized form of the drug- counterfeit 30mg oxycodone "blue M30" pills. Even the legit M30 oxycodone pills contain a substantial amount of filler; they're stamped to be nearly the same size as 325mg aspirin tablets, and it's unlikely that they weigh significantly less. The DEA reports that the counterfeits often contain 2mg of fentanyl- a possibly lethal dose. And almost certainly less than 1% of the total weight of the pills, which are the most commonly confiscated form of fentanyl- because they've already been pressed into dealer and user-friendly form for street retail. There have been seizures of large quantities of the pure powder at border stops, but it's more typically discovered in pill form. Which means that in reality, the amount of actual fentanyl seized is more like 500-1000 lbs. than 50,000 lbs.
The entire worldwide demand for legitimately manufactured fentanyl was only around 3500 lbs. in 2015, according to the Wiki, which also notes that as of 2017, fentanyl was the most widely used synthetic opioid in medicine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl
It's doubtful that Customs and Border Protection are seizing any great amount of fentanyl smuggled through the international mail at all. That supply is much more likely to consist of much higher percentage of fentanyl, most of which is also pressed into pills for the illicit retail market after being mixed with inert powder dilutants, most often using some sort of food blender. Mixed, kinda sorta. And it's easy to find an M30 pill press- wanna buy one? https://duckduckgo.com/?q=m30+pill+press+for+sale&t=newext&atb=v336-1&ia=web
Welcome to the 21st century, suckers. Caveat Emptor.
The real endgame is Carfentanil, which is 100x as powerful be weight as mere fentanyl.
The usual cluelessness on the phenomenon, as exemplified by this excerpt from a recent Washington Times article:
"Ms. Milgram’s testimony suggested fentanyl remains the top threat, though there are chemical cousins to fentanyl that are just as bad or worse. For instance, experts say fentanyl analogs, namely remifentanil and carfentanil, are more potent than typical street fentanyl.
“...As long-term users become tolerant to the effects of opioids, they often seek stronger drugs to attain the high they used to get but no longer do; that will mean there is at least some market for drugs that are stronger than fentanyl,” said Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University professor who tracks the overdose issue.
However, he said there is no evidence that fentanyl users have flocked to other drugs as a direct result of state crackdowns.
No, no, no. Illicit opioid users are not driving the market for stronger, more powerful, more lethal opioids; the imposed condition of prohibition and the market economics of supply have combined to drive almost everything less powerful than fentanyl off of the market. And if carfentanil eventually supplants fentanyl, it will be due to those same market conditions, not mass popular outcry from opioid users demanding designer opioids with a lethal dose in the range of 1/50 of a milligram.
My understanding is that Anthony Blinken went to China to dissuade them in going in on BRICS as a trade currency, which has the potential to unseat the U.S. Dollar as the world currency. And I’ve never understood blaming China for fentanyl -- I thought the precursors were industrial chemicals that have many uses and are therefore hard to regulate without severely impacting the economy.
Ben Westhoff's book Fentanyl, Inc.- which I plan to purchase- undoubtedly has some detailed information on the precursors and supply chain. But I did a keyword search one night and found that all of the precursors for fentanyl and its analogs have so many other uses in chemical and pharmaceutical manufacture that imposing tight controls on their distribution is practically impossible. And the formula is public, of course, although I doubt that these compounds are easy to manufacture safely without some extra precautions in the final stages.
This is in marked contrast with the case of substances like methamphetamine and LSD, which require uncommon precursors like ephedrine or P-2-P (for meth) or ergotamine tartarate (for LSD)...although it's obvious that increased oversight over the precursor supply chain has not been sufficient to curtail the manufacture of either of those substances. Really, we're talking about finished products with a very high profit margin per yield; and chemistry being what it is, if precursors can't be purchased, they can be manufactured from scratch. When the substance in question is effective at 5-20 micrograms, like carfentanil, the quantity of chemicals required to produce a million "dosage units" is...not very much.
I'd venture that currently the biggest impediment to production of fentanyl and its analogs in clandestine labs within the US is finding wholesale and distribution channels. The Mexican organized crime networks really have managed to achieve something close to monopoly control over the wholesale street market in illicit opioids from coast to coast. So unless a chemist has worked out a deal with one of those syndicates, they have no one to sell their product to.
Thanks both of you for your comments. You're right that many fentanyl precursors, and especially pre-precursors, have other legitimate uses. What the US wants China to do is make sure chemical companies don't just ship them to anyone, that they check the credentials of, say, the receivers in Mexico before sending them over. And the biggest reason more precursors aren't produced in the US, Mexico, or other countries is cost: China does it most cheaply. India is on their tail.
"the biggest reason more precursors aren't produced in the US, Mexico, or other countries is cost: China does it most cheaply. India is on their tail."
Speaking as a non-ideologue who's quite aware of the advantages of independent markets and private enterprises in production of consumer goods, I've arrived at the position that pharmaceutical manufacture should be nationalized.
Considered as a consumer good, drugs are an exception that's practically unique: they're generic chemical compounds (or, occasionally, mixtures of those compounds.) The researchers and research teams responsible for producing new compounds should be rewarded for their efforts on the basis of an improvement in patient outcomes. But it's a field where patents should not apply. This is medicine and pharmacology- about healing, not a cash cow. At minimum, there should be a public option (I've heard that the state of California is pursuing in-house manufacture of prescription drugs.) Domestic production is much more amenable to effective oversight and quality control.
(By contrast, I prefer a much more limited form of public health insurance that emphasizes major medical expenses, catastrophic coverage, and long-term care rather than the kind that maintains all-pervading medical corporatization of physician care and medical tests. I've had physicians who charged patients on a sliding income scale, and also found that cash visits and lab tests are typically a fraction of the amount billed to insurance companies. I'd rather pay my doctors and routine medical tests directly. I'd like to see a renewed emphasis on personal doctor-patient relationships- and medical privacy. But that's a different issue...)
It's beyond obvious that the statistics touting seizures of "50,000 lbs." of fentanyl are including the inert ingredients used as filler for the most commonly seized form of the drug- counterfeit 30mg oxycodone "blue M30" pills. Even the legit M30 oxycodone pills contain a substantial amount of filler; they're stamped to be nearly the same size as 325mg aspirin tablets, and it's unlikely that they weigh significantly less. The DEA reports that the counterfeits often contain 2mg of fentanyl- a possibly lethal dose. And almost certainly less than 1% of the total weight of the pills, which are the most commonly confiscated form of fentanyl- because they've already been pressed into dealer and user-friendly form for street retail. There have been seizures of large quantities of the pure powder at border stops, but it's more typically discovered in pill form. Which means that in reality, the amount of actual fentanyl seized is more like 500-1000 lbs. than 50,000 lbs.
The entire worldwide demand for legitimately manufactured fentanyl was only around 3500 lbs. in 2015, according to the Wiki, which also notes that as of 2017, fentanyl was the most widely used synthetic opioid in medicine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl
It's doubtful that Customs and Border Protection are seizing any great amount of fentanyl smuggled through the international mail at all. That supply is much more likely to consist of much higher percentage of fentanyl, most of which is also pressed into pills for the illicit retail market after being mixed with inert powder dilutants, most often using some sort of food blender. Mixed, kinda sorta. And it's easy to find an M30 pill press- wanna buy one? https://duckduckgo.com/?q=m30+pill+press+for+sale&t=newext&atb=v336-1&ia=web
Welcome to the 21st century, suckers. Caveat Emptor.
The real endgame is Carfentanil, which is 100x as powerful be weight as mere fentanyl.
The usual cluelessness on the phenomenon, as exemplified by this excerpt from a recent Washington Times article:
"Ms. Milgram’s testimony suggested fentanyl remains the top threat, though there are chemical cousins to fentanyl that are just as bad or worse. For instance, experts say fentanyl analogs, namely remifentanil and carfentanil, are more potent than typical street fentanyl.
“...As long-term users become tolerant to the effects of opioids, they often seek stronger drugs to attain the high they used to get but no longer do; that will mean there is at least some market for drugs that are stronger than fentanyl,” said Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University professor who tracks the overdose issue.
However, he said there is no evidence that fentanyl users have flocked to other drugs as a direct result of state crackdowns.
“People who follow politics and policy imagine that everyone else does also, but the average person pays little attention and the average person who is addicted to fentanyl pays even less,” Mr. Humphreys said...." https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jul/27/dea-chief-fentanyl-remains-top-threat-but-worse-sy/
No, no, no. Illicit opioid users are not driving the market for stronger, more powerful, more lethal opioids; the imposed condition of prohibition and the market economics of supply have combined to drive almost everything less powerful than fentanyl off of the market. And if carfentanil eventually supplants fentanyl, it will be due to those same market conditions, not mass popular outcry from opioid users demanding designer opioids with a lethal dose in the range of 1/50 of a milligram.
Thanks for your comment. You are totally right on about the amount of actual fentanyl in seizures.