# 50 TIMES STRONGER THAN HEROIN: Drug called ‘Drop Dead’



## poledriver

*‘Drop Dead’ drug fentanyl epidemic spurred by amateur chemists*







> George Marquardt began making heroin at 14, then graduated to super-charged fentanyl. Picture: Fusion TV



IT’S the drug nicknamed “Drop Dead” because just a few grains of the pure product can kill you.

Fentanyl is commonly used in hospitals as a stronger alternative to morphine, but recreational use is spiralling out of control on the streets of America.
The popularity of the highly addictive opiate among addicts is said to have started with a man named George Marquardt, the so-called Walter White of Wichita.

The chemistry prodigy began cooking up heroin in his parents’ basement at just 14 or 15 using basic equipment and old textbooks. He quickly gained a reputation, graduating to manufacturing whatever drug dealers requested.
Marquardt spent the 1970s making ingredients (or precursors) for amphetamines, Mescaline, and LSD.

He was far from ashamed. In 1978, when police raided his Oklahoma lab, he proudly talked them through his system for making meth, and was sentenced to jail, Newsweek reported.
That’s where he first learned about fentanyl, also known as “Tango & Cash”, a drug 50 times stronger than heroin.

By 1989, the science fair winner had learned how to replicate the prescription drug and was essentially creating a market for it in America, according to fusion.net.
Manufacture was tricky, taking up to 10 days of solid work for one batch, and extremely dangerous, with the drug producing toxic fumes and a risk of explosions.

But Marquardt was making money beyond his wildest dreams. He wasn’t scared of the dealers, because he knew they needed him.
In the early 1990s, Drug Enforcement Agency officers discovered an epidemic of fentanyl overdoses in the northeastern US, with between 126 and 300 users found dead in a year, some with needles still in their arms, the Baltimore Sun reported.







> Fentanyl is again the scourge of America, after Marquardt spent 22 years in prison. Picture: Fusion TVSource:Supplied



Marquardt had made a point of varying the molecular structure of the drug to make it look as though there was more than one fentanyl lab. But eventually it was traced back to his makeshift lab.
Today, former DEA agents say he was no Walter White from Breaking Bad — he was far worse. He has been called the most talented illicit chemist in the history of America, an “evil genius” and a “serial killer.”

The criminal chemist was the only person to ever build his own mass spectrometer, a machine that determines the structures of organic molecules, to ensure the purity of his compounds.
He was sentenced to 25 years behind bars, serving 22 before his release last year aged 69.

The self-taught chemist admitted to fusion.net that he was addicted to the money, and arrest was the only thing that would have stopped him. He never felt guilty.







> Australian toxicologist Kristin Rossum used the lethal drug to murder her husband in 2001.Source:News Limited



Cont -

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/he...s/news-story/69f2fcc69ab2be6347a18c1b4dfc6add


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## szuko000

Yes lets tell everyone you can cook drugs if you want lol... this story always repeats itself over and over just with new faces and compounds. Not discrediting anyone's time and efforts but they make it sound like this is something new... a lot of people probably just order it from China or did prior to the ban. Building an MS is really cool though... i would order one from ebay these days lol

Good for him though and we all know it pays to be a chemist, personally its not something i would ever engage in or find "cool" but i dont have the same love for money as some people and i value human life a lot both of which are probably a good thing


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## sigmond

szuko000 said:


> Yes lets tell everyone you can cook drugs if you want lol... this story always repeats itself over and over just with new faces and compounds. Not discrediting anyone's time and efforts but they make it sound like this is something new... a lot of people probably just order it from China or did prior to the ban. Building an MS is really cool though... i would order one from ebay these days lol
> 
> Good for him though and we all know it pays to be a chemist, personally its not something i would ever engage in or find "cool" but i dont have the same love for money as some people and i value human life a lot both of which are probably a good thing


yea...I was thinking: not-this-shit-again.jpg


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## Jabberwocky

*THE WALTER WHITE OF WICHITA*

A few grains, equivalent to the size of three sugar crystals. That’s the amount of pure fentanyl that is LETHAL.

First manufactured in the 1960s as a painkiller for surgery patients, the drug is one of the most potent opiates in human history -- 100 times more powerful than morphine, and 50 times stronger than heroin alone. It is now flooding the streets as an addictive recreational drug, adding a terrifying turn to the worst narcotics epidemic in American history.

Fentanyl was originally available only as a highly controlled prescription, but legitimate drugmakers have developed new fentanyl prescription products, and its uses have expanded. Illicit dealers have figured out how to replicate it. The drug is routinely cut up with heroin or sold on its own in glassine Baggies stamped with names like “Drop Dead” or “Tango & Cash.” In New Hampshire, 28 people died overdosing on pure heroin last year. Nearly ten times that number -- 253 -- overdosed fatally on fentanyl or fentanyl-laced heroin.

The current epidemic, however, is not the first time fentanyl has shown up as a highly addictive killer in alleys and apartments across America. In the early 1990’s, Drug Enforcement Agency officers started to track a rash of fatal fentanyl overdoses in the northeastern U.S. They FOUND BETWEEN 126 AND 300 DEAD USERS in a little over a year, some with needles still in their arms, all from the same designer version of the drug.

_“I'M A FELLOW THAT WILL MANUFACTURE A CHEMICAL COMPOUND IF YOU HAVE A SUFFICIENTLY LARGE QUANTITY OF MONEY.”_

Fentanyl is so deadly that it’s nearly impossible to cut or create safely in a clandestine setting. But someone was doing just that: It appeared to investigators that an enterprising individual had cracked the prescription’s recipe in an illegal lab and was now selling his secret to drug dealers and other “cooks.”

They were right. Their man was a onetime science-fair champion and self-taught chemist in Wichita, Kansas, named George Marquardt.

In an exclusive interview with Fusion, Marquardt -- now 69 and an ex-convict, barred by a court from touching laboratory equipment -- discussed his skills and his trade.

“I am not a pharmacist,” he said. “I am not an M.D. I'm a fellow that will manufacture a chemical compound if you have a sufficiently large quantity of money.”

He explained to Fusion how he first got involved in illegal drug production, working with a friend to produce heroin using basic lab equipment and old chemistry manuals, some printed in German.

“I was perhaps about 14 or 15 years old at the time,” he said.

“This is not, you know, as remarkable as you might think,” he added. “If you look through these old laboratory manuals, this is just chemistry. Put one step ahead of the next. You work up your products. And I became skillful at feeding one reaction into the other.”

In a court hearing, he famously identified his profession as “drug manufacturer.” When asked by the judge what kind of drugmaker he was, he replied: “Clandestine.” (“It was a very polite exchange,” he told Fusion.) A retired DEA agent involved in the hunt for Marquardt calls him the very best illicit chemist in the history of American drugmaking. The best, and one of the deadliest. He was described variously by reporters in the ’90s as a “mythical figure,” an “evil genius,” and a “serial killer.”

On many particulars, such as how to make specific drugs or whom he worked with, Marquardt was purposefully vague. Many of his more colorful claims could not be confirmed. He is, after all, a convicted drugmaker. But federal officials Fusion spoke with said Marquardt’s terrible accomplishments lived up to the legend in more than a few respects.

He’s the only known illicit chemist to have built his own mass spectrometer, a machine that determines the structures of organic molecules, to ensure the purity of his compounds.

“This guy can make dope out of the dirt in your pockets,” a Washington State drug agent told the Canberra Times of Marquardt in 1993.

John Madinger, another retired narcotics agent who first met Marquardt after the black-market scientist was busted cooking methamphetamine in Oklahoma, scoffed at the idea of comparing Marquardt to WALTER WHITE, the high school teacher-turned meth-making kingpin in AMC’s TV series Breaking Bad. The fictional character, Madinger said, has nothing on the real deal.

“Above [Walter White] you've got Marquardt, who can manufacture the precursors and analyze them with a machine that he built himself, and installed in his laboratory,” he said. “Nobody's ever done that before in the United States or since. He's the only one.”

_MARQUARDT WOULD EITHER WIN A NOBEL PRIZE OR END UP BEHIND BARS, CHILDHOOD FRIENDS SAID.
_

A science prodigy from a young age, Marquardt grew up in a family that fed his curiosities about the physical world. His father, he says, was fascinated by metallurgy -- a product of the elder Marquardt’s business, working for a firm that made steel appliances for other manufacturers. “This was just sort of always around me,” he said. “I thought this was utterly fascinating.”

It was 1964 when the curious teen first hooked up with a supplier to make illegal narcotics in Waukesha, Wisconsin, a sleepy Milwaukee suburb. “This was in the basement of my parents’ house,” he said. “A lot of chemistry was going on there.”

As for his first drug batch, “I made no use of it,” he said. “I rode to the person who was interested in it with a couple of ounces of heroin in a little brown bottle, on a Schwinn three-speed bicycle.”

From there, he branched out. “Hallucinogens… and things like mescaline, 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine,” he said. “I was at a party one time with my girlfriend. And I was given a couple of mescaline bottles by a fellow there. ‘Oh, you're some kind of a chemical technician. You can make this stuff, can you?’”

From there, his business grew in earnest. “Most often what would happen is someone would promise us, ‘Well, you know, if you can make a pound of this or that, we can get you some money.’” Most of what he made were other ingredients for illicit drugs that would raise flags if dealers bought them from a chemical supplier -- “precursors,” Marquardt called them. It was slow work, not always terribly profitable. Drug chemistry “was one of several opportunities” for a man like him. There were others available, he claimed: “I contemplated counterfeiting at one time.”

Then came the 1970s and the drug war. “Oh my goodness, now I have a business,” he thought. He churned out precursors to amphetamines, Mescaline, and LSD.

_“OH MY GOODNESS, NOW I HAVE A BUSINESS.”_

The specter of arrest and incarceration didn’t seem to bother Marquardt much. In 1978, when cops raided his lab in Oklahoma, he WALKED THEM THROUGH HIS PROCESS FOR COOKING METH and quickly pled guilty to his charges.

It was in jail, among other entrepreneurs of the drug trade, that he first heard about fentanyl and its powerful properties. By 1989, he was helping dealers develop a market for the compound.

He may have struck his buyers as a wizard, but making fentanyl in a lab was neither easy nor quick. “Eight, ten days of some pretty severe work is not uncommon,” he said. “Some of these reactions are long. You can shorten them up and you can use the accelerated techniques, [but] your yields go in the toilet, essentially.”

To stay ahead in the drug-cooking business -- and out of jail -- it’s not enough just to make the product. You have to stay off law enforcement’s radar. “I wished to make it appear to the opposition that there was more than one fentanyl laboratory” by varying the drug’s molecular “fingerprint,” Marquardt said.

And he wanted to disguise the drug so it wouldn’t show up in standard testing. “I read the forensic science literature religiously. I read publications like Police Science Abstracts. Surveyed all the appearance or the appearances of fentanyl everywhere that I could find out from the literature. And gave careful thought to what these people had done wrong.”

It wasn’t just the police he had to look out for. Marquardt’s many employers had strong incentives to cover their tracks and shut up their suppliers. Death at the hands of drug kingpins was always possible, though Marquardt thought they’d be irrational to pull anything like that on him. Unlike with a coca or opium farmer, “they can't really easily replace you,” he said. “The more elaborate and complex the plan becomes, the less likely it is that they're going to be able to get rid of you. And of course if they try to shoot you or something like that, they've lost their investment. They have nothing at all.”

The fact that Marquardt wasn’t killed by his work is the best indication of his chemical genius, narcotics agents say, given the lethality of the drugs he was cooking. “That in itself indicates an astonishing level of chemical skill, especially for someone who never went to college,” former DEA forensic chemist Sandy Angelos said in 1993.

Explosions were possible, and toxic fumes were produced. Contacting the drug or some of its precursors with the skin could be fatal. “If he makes a mistake... he'll find out he made a mistake when the devil welcomes him to breakfast,” said Madinger.

Marquardt was quickly hooked, but not on his products. “I had a need of money. I was going out into the world and I wasn't particularly interested in a structured lifestyle,” he said, adding he operated as a “free marketeer and a consultant” on workdays. “My name was known and I went to this dealer and that dealer and the other dealer and generated as much capital as possible and went about living my life, you know.” His livelihood gave him time to spend on other passions -- listening to classical symphonies and visiting concert halls.

Asked why he didn’t go to college and become a professional chemical engineer, Marquardt laughed. “Doesn’t pay very much,” he said, relating a story about an educated friend, “a legendary oil field inventor,” who devised a new technique to extract oil from the ground. “And he really never made any significant amounts of money out of that thing,” Marquardt said. “Other people made the money, not the technical person.” Besides, PhDs’ lives were dull: “They get focused in rather narrow areas. And they end up spending, you know... what's that term? Lives of quiet desperation.”

At least one person familiar with the teenage Marquardt, a Wisconsin scientist, offered a simpler explanation for his aversion to formal schooling. "He should go on to college," the scientist REPORTEDLY TOLD A MILWAUKEE PAPER IN 1965. "But he seems to be convinced that he's too smart."

_ASKED WHY HE DIDN’T GO TO COLLEGE AND BECOME A PROFESSIONAL CHEMICAL ENGINEER, MARQUARDT LAUGHED. “DOESN’T PAY VERY MUCH.”_

“Too smart” goes a long way to explaining the drugmaker’s psyche. Marquardt would either win a Nobel Prize or end up behind bars, childhood friends said. They were right.

In 1993, EMTs were called to an industrial warehouse on the outskirts of Wichita. There they found a Pittsburgh businessman collapsed, unconscious. Supposedly, he had caught an accidental whiff of some toxic fumes in the warehouse’s chemical works.

The man was JOSEPH MARTIER, one of Marquardt’s associates. “He was actually exposed to no fumes,” Marquardt said. “He did the drug.” Unable to revive Martier after finding him overdosed in the bathroom, Marquardt had called 911. EMTs and doctors at the hospital, having seen Marquardt’s setup, started to piece things together that night, he says.

Marquardt felt the eyes on him at the hospital, imagined the doctors thinking: “Who is this guy wandering around at 2:30 in the morning in a pair of bib overalls that drives a pickup truck that owns a high resolution mass spectrometer and runs a laboratory?” At that point, he figured it was a matter of time before police arrested them both. When his car was surrounded by police shortly after, he said, “I was surprised that it took them that long to put it together.”

As in 1978, he immediately confessed his crimes to the authorities. “I just don’t bother with the lies,” he said. “When the game's over, it's just over. If you can't deal with the consequences of these things, you should have carried a lunch bucket.”

DEA agents suspect Marquardt’s Wichita lab was the sole source of the potent drug that killed somewhere between 126 and 300 people at the time, but owing to his masking methods, they’ll never be sure. He was sentenced to 25 years, eventually serving 22 before his release last year. As soon as he was jailed, the nation’s torrent of deadly fentanyl overdoses dried up.

_“YOU DON'T QUIT ON YOUR OWN, BECAUSE A PILE OF MONEY IS AN EXCEEDINGLY ATTRACTIVE SIGHT.”_

For a man whose concoctions caused between 126 and 300 deaths, George Marquardt seems remarkably sanguine about his former business; some of his fiercer critics have suggested he’s sociopathic. “The dope users know that to use these things are extremely high risk,” he said:

It makes it attractive to them, in fact. They court these risks. I put this to a fellow one time: “If we could make this risk-free, would you be interested in it?” And he says, “No, I like to live on the edge.” And so it's, if you will, a kind of a partnership forged in hell, right? And everybody basically knows we're on the same page in that regard. So I don't feel like I'm supplying a product to an innocent or naïve population.

Marquardt insisted, though, that he wasn’t victim-shaming. “I attach no blame to them,” he said of drug users. “They are what they are. I am what I am. We're both criminals.”

Would he cook fentanyl again? Nope. “Scares me to death,” he said. “Too popular.” There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of enterprising black-market Marquardts making fentanyl now, spurred in part by prescription fentanyl reaching a widening net of patients -- more recipes for the drug filtering down to the streets, making their way to more addicts and would-be basement chemists.

He sees no reason why that number of drug entrepreneurs would ever shrink: “The way you quit is the D.E.A. or the state agencies knock you out of the business,” he said. “You don't quit on your own, because a pile of money is an exceedingly attractive sight.”

Now, an illegal market that owes much of its existence to George Marquardt has passed him by. So has the world, in many respects. Before sitting down for this interview, the master chemist asked a Fusion reporter to help him turn his phone off. And the talk was over, he asked the reporter to turn it back on for him.

He’d never been able to figure out how to do it himself, he said.


Source: http://interactive.fusion.net/death-by-fentanyl/the-walter-white-of-wichita.html


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## Jabberwocky




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## slimvictor

Scare tactics are unchanged. 
Say "X times stronger than (strong, scary drug)" and show mugshots. 



> Australian toxicologist Kristin Rossum used the lethal drug to murder her husband in 2001.Source:News Limited


I hate lethal drugs.  Like water, which has killed so many innocents.


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## StudebakerHawk

This creep clearly is a sociopath with no remorse for the 100s of people he has killed with his poisons ....

I seem to recall reading about a bad batch of fentanyl that caused a type of " instant Parkinson's disease " that left the victims permanently disabled , and to endure the rest of their lives in utter misery .
I wonder if this guy was also responsible for that tragedy ?


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## Burnt Offerings

StudebakerHawk said:


> This creep clearly is a sociopath with no remorse for the 100s of people he has killed with his poisons ....
> 
> I seem to recall reading about a bad batch of fentanyl that caused a type of " instant Parkinson's disease " that left the victims permanently disabled , and to endure the rest of their lives in utter misery .
> I wonder if this guy was also responsible for that tragedy ?



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPTP



> now 69 and an ex-convict, barred by a court from touching laboratory equipment



LOL


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## .:Holy::Toast:.

slimvictor said:


> Scare tactics are unchanged.
> Say "X times stronger than (strong, scary drug)" and show mugshots.



My city put out ads warning people about fentanyl and they use the same statistic "fentanyl is over 100 times more toxic than heroin or oxycodone"
But there is a real dishonestly by equating the toxicity of drugs solely as a measure of mass, opposed to factoring in the dosage differences between the two compounds.
By this logic alcohol is one of the least toxic drugs in existence considering you would need usually at least +5 grams of pure ethanol for it to kill you.
At a dosage of fentanyl which produces equivalent effects to a certain dosage of heroin, I doubt there is any difference in relative toxicity, but intellectual honesty generally won't serve their agenda of instilling fear as a means of deterrence.


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## poledriver

*Fentanyl: drug 50 times more potent than heroin ravages New Hampshire*



> Of 69 fatal overdose victims last year, 68% had taken the synthetic opioid, which Mexican cartels have learned to make and smuggle to interstate highways. The drug ‘is what is killing our citizens,’ says Manchester’s police chief








Officer Shaun McKennedy’s first overdose call comes in at 6.39pm. He turns the sirens on and rushes over to 245 Laurel street, a midsize apartment building. There’s an abandoned baby carriage in the front yard. A man wearing a Bride of Chucky shirt peeps out of his doorway as McKennedy, 24, rushes upstairs.

Several men from the local fire department and EMT department are already there, hovering around the seemingly lifeless body of a 31-year-old man on the living room floor in a soaking wet T-shirt and jeans. It’s a situation McKennedy, 24, has been through dozens of times since he joined the force last July.

“Larry! Larry! Stay with us!” yells Justin Chase, a Manchester EMT medic. He injects naloxone, a medication that reverses the effects of opioids, up Larry’s nose.

His body shakes and his eyes pop open. “What’s up?” he asks, without blinking.

Larry agrees to go to the emergency room at Elliot hospital, but it will be several weeks before test results determine exactly what led to his overdose. It’s the first time he’s done that, he tells McKennedy later that night. Usually he injects between two and three grams of heroin a day; that evening he only took 0.2 grams, or a “pencil”. He’s not sure if he overdosed because he lost his tolerance – he says he’s been clean for just over two months – or if it was laced with fentanyl.

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid 100 times more powerful than morphine, and 30-50 times more powerful than heroin.

“Fentanyl is what is killing our citizens,” said Manchester’s chief of police, Nick Willard, in testimony before Congress last week.

In 2013, the city of Manchester had 14 fatal overdoses, one of which (7%) involved a victim with fentanyl in their system, according to Willard. In 2015, 69 people fatally overdosed, 68% of whom had taken fentanyl.

The state statistics are no more cheery. Officials at the office of the chief medical examiner in New Hampshire say they have yet to receive testing results from 36 suspected overdoses, but they’ve counted 399 fatal overdose victims so far, more than two-thirds of whom died with fentanyl in their system.

“It’s not like Mario Batali,” said Willard from his office in Manchester, comparing heroin dealers cutting their supply with the famed chef. “These guys are just throwing it in a mixer. You could get a bag that’s perfect and no one is going to die from it. You could also get a bag [that’s] straight fentanyl and that would kill you.”

Willard said that during a recent raid in Manchester, he found a dealer mixing fentanyl with whey protein. In another sting that led to a seizure in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the dealer was allegedly mixing heroin and fentanyl in a kitchen blender.

For the most part, said Willard, the story of opiate use in Manchester follows the same patterns as the rest of the country. The crisis was ushered in by the rise of prescription painkillers like OxyContin. Addicts looking for a cheaper high frequently turned to the more dangerous, yet significantly cheaper, heroin.

The turning point, he says, happened sometime after 2010, when Purdue Pharma altered the medication to make it more difficult to tamper with and get high. Suppliers in Mexico were quick to keep up with the burgeoning market, and addicts in Manchester, which sits near Interstate 93, Route 3, Route 81, and Route 9, had no problem tapping into the supply.

To make matters worse for Manchester, DEA agent Tim Desmond says intelligence indicates that Mexican cartels, specifically El Chapo’s Sinaloa cartel, have increased poppy production 50% since last year and have been targeting the north-east.

Fentanyl was first developed in the 1960s as a general anesthetic, and it is still regularly administered by doctors, usually in the form of lozenges and patches, frequently for cancer patients.

Addicts have found ways to abuse the prescription forms of the drug, by sucking on the patches, for example. But more recently, Mexican cartels have learned how to make their own fentanyl by importing the necessary chemicals from China, then smuggling the product across the border and on to the interstate highway system, said Desmond.

The United States has had fentanyl problems before. Between 2005 and 2007, more than 1,000 people died from the drug, mostly in the midwest. According to a press release from the DEA, all of those deaths could be traced to a single lab in Mexico. Once the DEA shut down the lab, the fentanyl epidemic stopped too.

This time around, the DEA has not yet targeted a single lab in Mexico responsible for the epidemic in New England, said Desmond. Instead, federal agents and local police are targeting area dealers. “Sometimes we have to start at the bottom of the food chain in order to go up the ladder,” he said.

In Manchester, Willard is working to exterminate the epidemic from the ground up. When he became chief in the summer of last year, he turned over his drug unit, and ordered detectives to arrest dealers quickly to get them off the street, rather than wait to build a more thorough case or work up the supply line.

He’s also worked to build a state and federal taskforce, called Granite Hammer, which began last September; so far, he says, the unit has made 77 arrests. He has also called for an increase in state support for recovery clinics.

McKennedy responded to two more overdose calls that night. First was a man in his late 20s named Mark, who passed out in a laundromat with one needle in his arm and one full, and ready to go. Mark was less willing to accompany the EMTs to the hospital.

“Do you want to die?” asked Chase.

“Who the fuck would want to live in this life?” Mark’s statement, said Chase, is suicidal ideation, which means that the EMTs are required to take him to the hospital anyways. At the hospital, Mark asked McKennedy for his heroin back.

The next call was for a woman in her early 30s. Dawn Marie overdosed at a friend’s apartment. It took two doses of naloxone to revive her. Her friend has two children. They practiced spelling out the alphabet on a coloring book in a room next door.

Other officers responded to a fourth overdose call while McKennedy helped EMTs attend to an addict who tried to take his own life with a kitchen knife. He recognized McKennedy from a previous overdose. “Another day in paradise,” he said as the officer walked through the door.

In a moment of calm, McKennedy assisted Officer Mark Aquino with a traffic stop. Aquino is a drug recognition expert. It’s getting more difficult to recognize addicts, he said. Heroin is easy to detect, the user’s pupils get small and pin-like. “Fentanyl doesn’t restrict pupils,” he said. “They nod instead,” he explained, dropping his chin to his chest.

At 10.30, McKennedy returned to the department to fill out paperwork accounting for the calls. Another “consistent” shift in Manchester, he concluded. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

This article was amended on 4 February 2016 to correct a homophone (farmer/pharma) in the name Purdue Pharma, and a reference to “chief” that should have been “chef”.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/04/fentanyl-drug-heroin-new-hampshire-mexico-cartels


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## Crankinit

> At a dosage of fentanyl which produces equivalent effects to a certain dosage of heroin, I doubt there is any difference in relative toxicity,



Actually, while I can't cite any specific studies to back this up, since I don't believe any exist, my own experience is that equipotent fentanyl is in fact more dangerous than heroin, even when using precisely measured and evenly cut product.

Firstly because the respiratory depression effect is much stronger than heroin (or the other popular pharmaceuticals - oxy, morphine, hydromorphone, etc.). The margin between a satisfying dose and a dose which will knock you out is much thinner than it is with heroin, or pharmaceuticals like oxy or morphine.

I say satisfying because fentanyl is much less euphoric than heroin and the other popular pharms (it feels closer to a xanax/opiate hybrid than heroin, a very cold, sedated effect, little to none of the euphoric, floating warmth). This is the next problem, you can have a large shot of fent, be nodding very hard, and still not be feeling all that much euphoria, which can lead to increasing the dose or topping up in an attempt to catch a buzz which quite simply isn't going to come.

There's also the issue of duration - IV fentanyl wears off quickly (45 - 60 minutes), meaning you're constantly redosing in order to keep the buzz going. So statistically, if we assume every shot has a given chance of inducing an overdose, I'd imagine you're more likely to OD shooting fent simply because you're shooting up 4 - 6 times as frequently. On top of which, because it's so unsatisfying and wears off so quickly, you're also more likely to shoot up while a larger portion of the last dose is still in your system, leading to the doses stacking and knocking you out, or to increase your dose from one shot to the next. 

I was always extremely careful measuring doses over the 5 years I spent using opiates, and as a result I only OD'd three times (luckily, none of them required hospitalization). One of them was when I had lingering benzos in my system from the night before while shooting oxy, the other two were both during the 5 days I spent shooting precisely measured, evenly cut fentanyl, with no polydrug use involved and all doses precisely measured.




> but intellectual honesty generally won't serve their agenda of instilling fear as a means of deterrence.



While I'm not a fan of fear mongering or the kind of click-baiting sensationalist crap contained in this article ("The Real Walter White" etc) it's hardly intellectually dishonest to claim that the current presence of illicit fentanyl in the American opiate market is a major problem.

 Even if I'm incorrect in all of the above conclusions drawn from my own experiences, and fentanyl at equipotent doses is just as safe as heroin or oxy, these people _aren't_ using precisely measured and evenly cut fentanyl (or at least, only a tiny, tiny minority are). The majority are using unevenly cut fentanyl, either by itself as a heroin substitute or combined with heroin as an active cut, both of which are extremely dangerous, and this is reflected in the death stats cited.


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## Backspin

Crankinit said:


> Actually, while I can't cite any specific studies to back this up, since I don't believe any exist, my own experience is that equipotent fentanyl is in fact more dangerous than heroin, even when using precisely measured and evenly cut product.
> 
> Firstly because the respiratory depression effect is much stronger than heroin (or the other popular pharmaceuticals - oxy, morphine, hydromorphone, etc.). The margin between a satisfying dose and a dose which will knock you out is much thinner than it is with heroin, or pharmaceuticals like oxy or morphine.
> 
> I say satisfying because fentanyl is much less euphoric than heroin and the other popular pharms (it feels closer to a xanax/opiate hybrid than heroin, a very cold, sedated effect, little to none of the euphoric, floating warmth). This is the next problem, you can have a large shot of fent, be nodding very hard, and still not be feeling all that much euphoria, which can lead to increasing the dose or topping up in an attempt to catch a buzz which quite simply isn't going to come.
> 
> There's also the issue of duration - IV fentanyl wears off quickly (45 - 60 minutes), meaning you're constantly redosing in order to keep the buzz going. So statistically, if we assume every shot has a given chance of inducing an overdose, I'd imagine you're more likely to OD shooting fent simply because you're shooting up 4 - 6 times as frequently. On top of which, because it's so unsatisfying and wears off so quickly, you're also more likely to shoot up while a larger portion of the last dose is still in your system, leading to the doses stacking and knocking you out, or to increase your dose from one shot to the next.
> 
> I was always extremely careful measuring doses over the 5 years I spent using opiates, and as a result I only OD'd three times (luckily, none of them required hospitalization). One of them was when I had lingering benzos in my system from the night before while shooting oxy, the other two were both during the 5 days I spent shooting precisely measured, evenly cut fentanyl, with no polydrug use involved and all doses precisely measured.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> While I'm not a fan of fear mongering or the kind of click-baiting sensationalist crap contained in this article ("The Real Walter White" etc) it's hardly intellectually dishonest to claim that portraying the current presence of illicit fentanyl in the American opiate market is a major problem.
> 
> Even if I'm incorrect in all of the above conclusions drawn from my own experiences, and fentanyl at equipotent doses is just as safe as heroin or oxy, these people _aren't_ using precisely measured and evenly cut fentanyl (or at least, only a tiny, tiny minority are). The majority are using unevenly cut fentanyl, either by itself as a heroin substitute or combined with heroin as an active cut, both of which are extremely dangerous, and this is reflected in the death stats cited.



I almost died from this fucking shit. This is why someone told me to switch to Oxys. Now I got these APO Canadian Oxy 80's. How much do I grind up and snort ? Small bumps do nothing. But snorting a white powder again makes me nervous. 

do I have to rail a whole quarter ?


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## cj

Pretty cool that he built a GCMS


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## Neithman

this article is so stupid i cant even


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## SmokingAces

I read only a few lines before bailing on that, but I'm curious about this;

As a heroin user, why on earth do customers all still flock to the dealer with the batch everyone's OD'ing from. Are they too stupid to realise there is a high chance it's fent not strong dope? 

Sorry if this is a stupid question but I've seen it on drugs inc, and can't get my head round how anyone could be a daily heroin user and NOT know this already. Fair enough 20 years ago before the internet became so useful, or before it became public knowledge unscrupulous dealers were cutting their heroin with fentanyl... Seems like only a fucking idiot would go out looking for drugs that the recently killed others.


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## spacejunk

That second photo he looks like David Crosby.


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## consumer

spacejunk said:


> That second photo he looks like David Crosby.


Haha he does too...just after being busted for guns, crack and heroin


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## Burnt Offerings

Sid said:


> I read only a few lines before bailing on that, but I'm curious about this;
> 
> As a heroin user, why on earth do customers all still flock to the dealer with the batch everyone's OD'ing from. Are they too stupid to realise there is a high chance it's fent not strong dope?
> 
> Sorry if this is a stupid question but I've seen it on drugs inc, and can't get my head round how anyone could be a daily heroin user and NOT know this already. Fair enough 20 years ago before the internet became so useful, or before it became public knowledge unscrupulous dealers were cutting their heroin with fentanyl... Seems like only a fucking idiot would go out looking for drugs that the recently killed others.



A lot of heroin users aren't that smart lol. (I can say it, I was/am a dope user) Plus there's a weird opiate machismo about "tolerance", and some fools think they can withstand anything

Also, there's a certain subset of opiate/opioid users who actually like fentanyl...


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## szuko000

Sid said:


> As a heroin user, why on earth do customers all still flock to the dealer with the batch everyone's OD'ing from. Are they too stupid to realise there is a high chance it's fent not strong dope?
> 
> Sorry if this is a stupid question but I've seen it on drugs inc, and can't get my head round how anyone could be a daily heroin user and NOT know this already. Fair enough 20 years ago before the internet became so useful, or before it became public knowledge unscrupulous dealers were cutting their heroin with fentanyl... Seems like only a fucking idiot would go out looking for drugs that the recently killed others.



The issue is it takes a long time for tradition to change. As strange as it sounds the junkie/capitalistic tradition of "trying to get the best dope for your dollar" will override logic in most situations. This is because of 2 things; if your a junkie you want more opiates per dollar this drive will lead you to buy from the fent guy after people overdose. The second bit being that until enough time passes that there is statistical data for considering everyone will hold the "it wont happen to me" philosophy. That idea also works with cigarettes, if people think that 25% of people get cancer they will think they are among the 75% that wont because they are themselves and "that doesnt happen to me" That is a big part of human rationalization in a sense and i doubt if it will ever stop because of that simple fact.


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## PriestTheyCalledHim

An old article about him, that's extremely dated since it mentions AZT for HIV/AIDS.

http://www.newsweek.com/drug-wizard-wichita-193682



			
				Newsweek said:
			
		

> When Drug Enforcement Administration agents began a search two years ago for the maker of a mean designer drug called fentanyl, they had a strange profile to work with. They were looking for someone with access to a high-tech lab, a master chemist willing to brave highly toxic fumes-and to risk a life sentence if caught. The Feds didn't expect their quest to end in tiny Goddard, Kans., with the arrest of George Marquardt, 47, a onetime high-school dropout clad in overalls.
> 
> As the DEA quickly learned, Marquardt is no amateur but a self-taught scientist obsessed with improvising complex drugs. And fentanyl is certainly complex. In its legal form, it's a powerful anesthetic. On the street, it's a prized artificial form of heroin, so strong it can kill users before they have time to tug the needles from their arms. Few illicit chemists have the sophistication or the equipment to make fentanyl in marketable quantities. But early in 1991, it became apparent that somebody was. Junkies in New York City began turning up dead with the drug in their blood. Similar overdoses occurred in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and other Eastern cities. By the time of Marquardt's arrest last February, the death toll had climbed to at least 126. He now awaits trial as authorities explore whether East Coast mobsters bankrolled the fentanyl operation. And the DEA, NEWSWEEK has learned, is investigating whether scientists he knew helped him make the drug.
> 
> The arrest in Kansas wasn't Marquardt's first encounter with the law. In 1978, Oklahoma narcotics agents raided a remote farmhouse lab, only to have Marquardt usher them in and proudly explain his recipe for a methamphetamine they had never heard of (He later pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the bust.) The chemist hasn't changed his ways: at a hearing in Wichita this spring, he startled a federal judge by politely stating his occupation as "drug manufacturing." Of what sort, inquired the judge. "Clandestine," Marquardt replied.
> 
> Marquardt's fascination with drugs started early. He once told a reporter that, as a schoolboy, he was captivated by an anti-drug film in which a mouse on LSD chased a cat. At 19, he stole lab equipment from the University of Wisconsin, where he worked as a researcher. At 20, he pleaded guilty to impersonating an official of the Atomic Energy Commission specializing in isotope development. In that guise, Marquardt had hoodwinked a Milwaukee college into accepting him as a lecturer in physics. "He should go on to college," a Wisconsin scientist told the Milwaukee Journal in 1965. "But he seems to be convinced that he's too smart."
> 
> Those who know Marquardt say he is motivated by the love of chemistry, not money. "He wants to be a wizard," says John Duncan, intelligence chief of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics. "He wants to bestow drugs that will magically alter consciousness." Marquardt told Duncan he made AZT for AIDS sufferers who couldn't afford the drug, and provided survivalists in the Northwest with the key component of nerve gas. Marquardt has said he solves problems by envisioning himself as one neutron within an atom, imagining how molecules might form around him. OBN's director, Elaine Dodd, points to an interview in which Marquardt mused that drug making was "the last American folk adventure ... the light in the moon ... narcotics agents chasing you all over the land. It's a fantasy made real."
> 
> This time Marquardt was tripped up when a clue from a drug dealer in Boston led narcotics agents to Marquardt's home in Wichita and to a larger lab in ail industrial park in nearby Goddard. Marquardt has said in court that he won't contest the charge of conspiracy to manufacture fentanyl; neither he nor his attorney will comment further. An alleged accomplice, a Wichita geologist named Phillip Sam Houston, knew nothing about fentanyl production, his attorney says. Two others face charges of conspiracy to distribute the drug. The Boston dealer was mysteriously shot to death hours before the DEA planned to arrest him.
> 
> Investigators believe Marquardt was betrayed by those who used his skills to turn a profit. Marquardt shipped the fentanyl East in pure form, says Barry Jamison of the DEA office in Wichita, to be cut with other powders for distribution. Pure fentanyl is lethal in doses as small as three grains of salt. Whoever cut the East Coast product, investigators say, left "hot spots" in some street bags, creating a deadly game of addict's roulette. It's not yet clear whether Marquardt knew that others were improperly cutting the drug. The DEA claims a crucial victory in his arrest: he was the only U.S. source of illegal fentanyl.
> 
> Before Marquardt's 1978 sentencing, prosecutor John Osgood gave him a tip: show a little remorse. But Marquardt, acting as his own lawyer, couldn't lie. He told the judge that drug making was his career, Osgood recalls, and he'd probably return to it when he got out of prison. This time, drug agents hope the wizard of Wichita won't get another chance.


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## David Wooderson

poledriver said:


> A man wearing a Bride of Chucky shirt peeps out of his doorway as McKennedy, 24, rushes upstairs.


  lmfao  Best plug ever...


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## Neithman

Burnt Offerings said:


> A lot of heroin users aren't that smart lol. (I can say it, I was/am a dope user) Plus there's a weird opiate machismo about "tolerance", and some fools think they can withstand anything
> 
> Also, there's a certain subset of opiate/opioid users who actually like fentanyl...


haha dicksizing on having to spend 100 dollars a day for dope


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## 'medicine cabinet'

Fent sucks. Give me good ol raw dope amyday. It's nice and warm, fent is cold and just nod face. Not to mention the idiots that try and cut it into their shitty dope. Here I'm bmore when someone rds from scramble (the cheap xut up dirty dope) usually always fent. Don't really have to worry about it with the raw.

Plus the dudes that sell the good raw are on aa soff level and wouldn't even fuck w fent dope NC dead customers are not repeat customers


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