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♪♪
-Fentanyl is safe, in my eyes, compared to benzos and fent.
♪♪
People are dying without even having tinfoil down, you know?
They're taking a hoot and they're just dead.
♪♪
-We've started to see tranq come into the dope.
People are getting string injuries and wounds.
You can see down to the muscle tissue and the bone.
Large abscesses and, like, infections
where they're injecting.
-This tranq is intense.
Like, you feel like you're literally gonna die.
-Do you feel any sense of responsibility
for some of these new chemicals
that are kind of replacing fentanyl?
-No, no.
We knew the traffickers would continue to try.
We want to absolutely prohibit
all of these synthetics from coming in.
♪♪
-The benzos are going to kill a lot of people,
and it already has.
It's already started.
-Why is this being cut into everything?
-Because it's so addicting.
That's what everybody wants --
that ultimate high.
♪♪
Human error that we make costs lives.
You can put one batch out and it might kill a lot of people.
♪♪
[ Honks horn ]
Back seat.
My mom did the same trade for many, many years.
I was introduced to it at a young age,
and I just sort of followed in her footsteps.
And here I am.
Everything changed when fentanyl became the market.
♪♪
-Keisha's a drug dealer who asked us to
only use her first name.
Over the 20 years she's been selling,
she's seen the supply change dramatically.
♪♪
For the last decade, both Canada and the U.S.
have been ravaged by an overdose crisis,
largely fueled by the synthetic opioid fentanyl.
The pandemic made it worse by disrupting the drug supply
and cutting people off from harm-reduction services.
But the crisis is now reaching another turning point.
Chemicals made in labs are infiltrating the drug supply
and being combined with fentanyl
to make something more dangerous.
And nowhere is this more evident than in British Columbia.
♪♪
[ Blender whirring ]
♪♪
-You went from seeing brown substance,
which is heroin, and then you're like,
"Okay, what the...is this?"
'Cause it's purple and blue and pink
and all these weird colors.
Okay, so I just have to wait until it settles.
-Despite the shifting supply, Keisha still sells fentanyl.
She mixes it with purple food coloring
to differentiate it from cocaine,
and she cuts it with monk fruit, an organic sweetener
she says is safer than other cutting agents.
Still, it's not safe.
Fentanyl is up to 50 times more potent than heroin.
It's been linked to at least 250,000 deaths
in the U.S. and Canada.
-The risk is extremely dangerous every day.
You know, anything can happen.
See how there's, like, smoke coming out?
-Yeah. -That's the dangerous
part of it. -Just because it's so potent?
-Yeah, yeah.
-When you think about fentanyl, it's always in the abstract,
and she's using, like, just these normal kitchen tools
and food coloring. It's very, like, basic.
♪♪
Keisha cooks her fentanyl every few days
in a process that takes hours.
-Yes.
-She charges $10 a bag
and can sell up to five ounces in a day
for as much as $15,000.
-What I see is that people need fentanyl more than heroin.
Like, more frequently. Like, heroin,
you used to be able to do a smash or, you know,
do a couple points and you'd be good all day
and all night. Well, people who use fent,
they need it every, like, three hours.
-So it just doesn't last as long?
-Doesn't last as long. Doesn't have legs.
-To make the fentanyl's effects last longer,
other suppliers have been cutting it
with ultra-potent chemicals.
One called etizolam is from a family of sedatives
called benzodiazepines.
This cocktail is being sold as benzo dope,
a drug that's deadlier and more addictive
than the sum of its parts.
In January, benzos were detected
in more than half of fatal overdoses.
So, fentanyl hits the market,
it's like the worst overdose crisis
we've ever seen, and now there's benzos in the fentanyl.
How has it changed things?
-I've never seen anything like it.
I've seen people do hoots and they're, like,
literally, folded in half on the ground for hours.
They're gone for.
The benzos are going to kill a lot of people.
And it already has. It's already started.
And everything is cut with it.
Everything.
It's very hard to find somebody who you can trust
to get just raw fent and not cut with any benzos.
Fentanyl is safe, in my eyes, compared to benzos and fent.
-That's a shocking statement, though.
For you to say that fentanyl, which has killed thousands --
hundreds of thousands at this point --
of people, and you're saying that it's safe
compared to this new dope that you're seeing.
-Yeah.
Way, way, more safer.
-Keisha considers herself an ethical dealer
because she doesn't cut benzos into her fentanyl.
Addiction specialists have been advocating
for keeping the drug supply safe for years.
They point to countries like Switzerland,
which created a prescription heroin program
to help curb overdose deaths, and in the last few years,
a handful of clinics in British Columbia
have taken safe supply a step further,
prescribing medical-grade fentanyl
for people severely addicted to opioids.
But these programs can be hard to access.
So Keisha says her customers and friends rely on her
for benzo-free fentanyl.
-So, those are all marked, and then what are these,
half grams? -Yep.
-Okay.
Well, tell them to...off.
-Okay, what I'm looking at, you wouldn't be able to know
that there was benzos in here or not.
They've put in different colors, but there's no way
that you could tell that you have benzos in it unless,
you know, someone told you.
People would mark their drugs with different colors,
so, you know, all the purple stuff is good
or the, you know, green stuff is good.
Problem with that is other people would hear
what's good on the street and then they would --
-They would mark it. Somebody overdosed on it,
they want it. -They want it.
And, you know -- -It just keeps getting stronger
and stronger because of the benzos in it.
Now guys, if you give them dope without benzos in it,
they don't even get unsick. -Oh, yeah.
-So it's no good. They could smoke that shit
all day, but once you get the benzos in it,
they love it.
But it makes them forget everything.
-Yeah. -Just gives them, like, amnesia.
Nobody remembers where they put their dope.
Everybody loses everything. Everybody gets robbed.
Good for people that sell dope, though,
because they always got to come back.
-Okay, and then these are halves.
-Okay.
-Keisha's house is a place for her customers to come and go,
using her drugs there.
She has naloxone on hand and says she's used it
to reverse hundreds of overdoses.
She lets people stay there.
Some of them are trying to wean off benzo dope,
and she's picked people up off the street
who look like they need help.
They just found this young girl and she's, like, 19.
She was outside of a hotel at night, freezing cold.
They brought her in, and she's hooked on benzo dope,
so they're trying to give her
some of Keisha's fentanyl instead.
She seems really freaked out.
She just keeps shaking, and she's just really jumpy.
She's talking to herself a lot.
She just seems very scared.
Not everyone Keisha offers to help gets off benzo dope.
♪♪
-Do you have any of the gray stuff on you?
-Pink stuff is what I was more shooting at.
That pink shit rocks you.
-One of her friends, Gord, is dependent on benzo dope.
-This is dangerous shit. Listen to me.
-Yeah. -I'm not even kidding.
-This right here is a pink right here.
This seems to be the higher kind of benzo shit
out there right now.
This is the dropper, man.
-It sure runs on the tinfoil real fast, eh?
-Jumps around a lot.
-Phew, you can smell that shit.
-People are dying without even having the tinfoil down,
you know? They're taking a hoot
and they're just dead.
Gord, wake up.
Come on. -Cuz.
-Gordo.
-Cuz. -I am.
-Okay, get up.
-You can't even tell if they're actually going down
because they're still talking to you and then they're going out.
Gordo.
It's getting a little funky.
-You go from, like, this normal skin tone
to, like, a white, like, light blue, and then you're --
and it's like the life is being sucked out of you.
-Where's the Narcan kit?
Gord, wake up or I'm gonna Narcan you.
They call it robbery dope.
You can given somebody a hoot
and you don't even have to rob them.
You just let them do a hoot and they're out.
Gord.
-My sister died here,
and I-I just can't deal with -- like, I flip right out,
and I kind of -- like, it's really hard for me.
I just want to help, and I don't know what to do.
-Gord, do you need some naloxone or what?
-No. -Okay.
Are you hungry? Did you eat?
Did you eat?
-No.
-They just become, like, zombies almost.
Like, they're just there.
Benzos are just insane.
It's scary shit.
♪♪
-They can try and justify that they're selling a better dope,
but at the end of the day, they're still dealing death.
They're still ripping families apart
and they're still burying people.
♪♪
-The other night was pretty intense.
It looked like Gord was going to overdose,
so we're checking in on him to see if he's okay.
♪♪
How are you feeling today?
-Pretty tired from yesterday.
-I do want to talk more about what happened,
because, yeah, it was pretty intense.
-Yeah. I don't even remember.
-You don't? -Nothing.
-Okay. -I don't remember anything.
-Do you remember, like, us -- me being here?
-Yeah, I remember you being here, and I remember talking to
you and I remember doing, like, putting some on the foil
and smoked a little bit, and then that's it.
-That's it? -Yeah, I don't remember, like,
what happened after that.
-You know, your cousin was saying that
she's worried that you might die.
-Yeah, I know.
She has been for a while.
-What do you think's going to happen with you
in the next, like, couple months?
-I think that I'll probably die.
-You do? -Maybe, yeah.
Like, if I make it to 40, I'll be surprised.
Like, I'm 39 now, and I'll be 40 in May.
I'd be pretty surprised.
Most people I know make it to 27,
28, 29, 30, around there, right?
I know someone that dies every day almost.
♪♪
-There's a generation of young drug users
who only know the new reality of a supply
with potent synthetic drugs.
There's been a jump in teen overdose deaths,
both in British Columbia and in the U.S.
[ Sirens wailing in distance ]
-My ex was so addicted to benzos,
I constantly had to smoke it, and I'm trying to
get over it now... -Yeah.
-...but I'm addicted to the non,
and I'm trying really hard to get over it.
-When did you tell that there was something off with the dope?
-I figured out there was something wrong with the dope
when I was given one hoot and I woke up the next morning
with my pants around my ankles.
-Oh, Jesus. -And I realized if I was raped
and I didn't wake up and, you know, I just --
not through any of it. I should have woken up.
Especially if it was normal dope,
I still would have woken up.
-Carrie began using heroin when she was 13.
Three years later, she's addicted to benzo dope.
-I have had a lot of pain and trauma in my life, a lot.
And it just...
um...
I'm sorry. [ Sniffles ]
A lot of my trauma and pain could have been prevented
if I didn't make the choices that I made,
and I just want, like,
to share my story and stuff to prevent a lot of other girls
from either going through that or girls who have experienced it
so they know they're not alone,
and that they can get through it.
-Can you tell when there's a difference
between the benzo dope and then the other dope?
-I can see a big difference.
It's like you smoke a good amount, and then after a while,
you kind of start to nod, and benzos,
you don't even get to blow that out yet
and your face is already in the ground.
-Have you overdosed?
-Oh, yeah. -Like, how many times?
-Many. I don't remember.
♪♪
-Carrie moved out of her mom's house in November
after her mom told her she couldn't stay
if she kept using drugs.
She's been homeless and couch hopping since.
Carrie's dad says that sometimes
he goes weeks without hearing from her.
When's the last time you saw Carrie?
-Two or three weeks ago.
Met her at McDonald's, bought her a coffee.
Had a nice little talk.
Got to hear "I love you."
Um, but it's a shell.
It's not my daughter.
It's the shell of her.
It's not who I used to know.
I've got four biological kids.
Three of them are stuck in addiction.
There is no norm in my life.
There's no normal Christmas.
There's no normal family dinners.
There's no normal Thanksgiving.
You can't bring any of them into the house because they take.
And I understand it's a survival mode.
Doesn't make it right.
-Have you noticed a difference
in how Carrie's been in the last couple years
since she started using benzo dope?
-I see weight loss to the point of serious concern.
I recognize her physically,
but there's no emotion that I recognize.
That's not my child anymore.
I don't know if any of my three kids have died
in the last 20 minutes.
That's reality. I don't.
I know they have not died 24 hours ago because the police
have not phoned me to identify a body.
But that thought goes through my mind every day
for all three of my kids.
-And what is that like for you as a dad?
-[ Voice breaking ] Kills you.
The biggest fear is the death.
Her elder sister, between 8 and 12 times,
I've gone to the Abbottsford Hospital
for overdose, and when you look at your child
and zero response, you wonder if the next time
you're looking at her is to identify them.
♪♪
-So, we have spent some time with dealers, you know,
around Abbottsford who are selling
a version of fentanyl that they say is not as toxic
as the benzo dope and some of these newer drugs
that are kind of hitting the market now.
What do you make of that?
-They can try and justify that they're selling a better dope,
a cleaner dope.
Death is still death.
Fentanyl has killed, has taken lives.
Every person that sells fentanyl
should be charged with murder.
Somebody has died because of what they have sold.
They're justifying in their own mind
why they're doing what they're doing.
But at the end of the day, they're still dealing death.
They're still ripping families apart
and they're still burying people.
♪♪
-Can you describe the extent of some of these wounds?
Like, they seem very serious.
-Some of them are open, they're gaping,
there's tissue exposed.
And some of it's down to the bone.
Some of them just look like small open sores
on the skin all over.
It can be on their hands, on their neck,
and on their face, and it's going untreated.
♪♪
-Drugs mixed with fentanyl aren't the only thing
making this latest wave of the overdose crisis so deadly.
Black market chemists are creating designer drugs in labs,
manufactured to mimic the effects of traditional drugs
while stopping just short of breaking the law.
Data exclusively shared with VICE News shows powerful
substances showing up in the U.S.'s illegal supply.
A new stimulant that can kill you is being sold as Molly
and ecstasy in nine U.S. states.
A synthetic cannabinoid that can put you in a coma or kill you
has been found in 13 states.
And a synthetic opioid 20 times stronger than fentanyl
is being sold as dope in 20 states.
♪♪
-So early on, the opioid crisis was linked to
prescription opioid tablets that then sort of
evolved into the heroin period.
That heroin period then evolved into what was considered
the third wave or the fentanyl wave.
I think it's very clear now that we have entered
this poly-drug wave when you have fentanyl
being mixed with other stimulants
or benzodiazepines or other drugs.
-These new drugs are all being tracked and monitored
by Alex Krotulski, a forensic toxicologist
at NPS Discovery.
Over the past four years, his program has identified
over 100 new drugs in the U.S.,
more than 30 in the last 12 months.
-What we've seen is that when the DEA generally schedules
a drug or a class, it does go away.
However, that opens the door for a new drug to take its place.
-I've heard this sort of race to keep track of
all these different drugs described as
a game of Whac-A-Mole, where new ones just keep popping up.
Is that an assessment you would agree with?
-Synthetic drugs, it does feel like a bit of
a game of Whac-A-Mole.
We generally understand that they may go away,
but it's really hard to predict the next thing
that's going to come.
-To find the new synthetic drugs,
Alex and his team get street samples
from medical examiners, coroner's offices,
crime labs, and other public agencies.
-So these are heroin packets that were sent to us.
Knowing that it's from Philadelphia
and knowing our history, I would assume
that it has fentanyl and xylazine.
♪♪
-Xylazine is a tranquilizer most commonly used on horses,
but it's now being used
to make the effects of fentanyl last longer.
Like benzos, it knocks out users for hours at a time
and doesn't respondent to naloxone,
which makes identifying it in the supply
all the more important for scientists like Krotulski.
-Each drug has their sort of own fingerprint associated with it,
so it will pair up the chemical fingerprint
of the drugs in our sample with a chemical fingerprint
of the drugs in our library database.
So, this is an example of a powder that contains xylazine.
So you have this big xylazine peak right here,
which, again, matches to our library against xylazine,
and then a fentanyl peak over here.
So this is what we very commonly see
in samples from Philadelphia.
-So, this one has more xylazine than fentanyl.
-So there's 24 times the amount of xylazine to fentanyl in here.
It's a massive amount, and we --
Unfortunately, this is not uncommon for us to see.
We do see very, very large amounts of xylazine
compared to fentanyl.
-Xylazine has been detected in at least 10 states
but is most prevalent in Pennsylvania,
where in 2020, it was found
in 1/4 of all of Philadelphia's fatal overdoses,
a 19% jump from 2019.
Why do you think the xylazine
has infiltrated the fentanyl supply in Philly to this degree?
-I wish I had an answer.
I think that's sort of, in some parts,
the million-dollar question right now.
It's been extremely surprising to me
how long xylazine has stayed around
and how ubiquitous it now is in the Philadelphia opioid supply.
♪♪
-Fentanyl cut with xylazine is called tranq or tranq dope.
Its impact in Philadelphia is most evident in Kensington.
The neighborhood's commonly called an open-air drug market,
because people buy, sell, and use drugs like tranq
right on the street.
We have eight tables today.
Table one, Narcan, fentanyl test strips,
water, hand sanitizer, masks.
-Five years ago, Sarah Laurel founded Savage Sisters,
an organization that runs sober living homes, needle exchanges,
and naloxone trainings.
-I ask that you just be really mindful
that we are walking into their territory.
This is their space.
And we want to meet them with love and light and kindness.
We're giving them everything that we can for free.
We're here to help.
And let's go serve our beautiful friends in Kensington.
Yes. [ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
-When I was getting high, it was just fentanyl and heroin.
And recently, they've been putting tranquilizer in it.
And it is so dangerous,
because people are getting a lot of open wounds on their skin.
They're getting infections.
They're continuously injecting it.
They look like they are not alive.
♪♪
We are heading to McPherson Square Park,
known on the streets as Needle Park.
It's where we do our outreach every week,
and it's where a lot of my friends are currently homeless.
♪♪
-Last year, Philadelphia's health department reported
that 91% of heroin and fentanyl samples also had xylazine.
♪♪
-There's people in this park that need help.
But I want to let you know that if you a user,
if you on heroin or you on fentanyl,
then please get off that, 'cause it is going to kill you.
-We're in Kensington with Savage Sisters.
They have set up tents to help people who are using tranq
with their wounds.
I've seen people with missing fingers,
with blackened skin, really serious lesions.
-Some of this are cuts, and some is just really dry blood.
Do you shoot up in your hands?
Alright, well, for the time being,
I know it's easier said than done,
because wherever you find one, you want to use it,
but try not your hands, okay? 'Cause your hands are --
Your hands are a little beat up, babe.
-Can you describe the extent of some of these wounds?
Like, they seem very serious.
-Some of them are open. They're gaping.
There's tissue exposed.
Some of it's down to the bone.
Some of them just look like
small, open sores on the skin all over.
It can be on their hands, on their neck, and on their face.
And it's going untreated.
We see a lot of people
that are having to lose limbs because of it.
And then we see other individuals
that maybe haven't lost it yet but most likely will.
-Let me take a look at you, hon.
You want me to clean that up a little bit?
♪♪
Can I see that finger over there?
Want me to get that cleaned up a little?
Boy, this is angry.
You need to be on an antibiotic or something.
I mean, you don't want to lose more of your finger, right?
You get yourself to that emergency room, okay, tomorrow?
-Thank you.
♪♪
-What's happening with your hands?
-Abscesses caused by
whatever they're putting within the drugs, right,
is coming out just about anywhere in the body.
You know, I never shoot up in my hands,
but yet I get abscesses in my knuckles,
in my tips of my fingers.
-Do you have these types of abscesses
in other parts of your body?
-Lot of it's internal.
-A lot of internal?
-Yeah, a lot of internal abscesses, right.
-You lost your other finger, right?
-Exactly. That was because of tranq.
Got infected.
And the treatments wasn't working.
And eventually, it just, like, died, turned pure white.
-Do you think that you might lose that finger?
-Yeah.
♪♪
-While some try to avoid tranq,
others, like Sam Brennan, need it.
How was the high different from the fentanyl?
-It's really not even, like, a high.
It's like, you do it, and you go out.
You don't remember going out,
and you wake up, and you're sick.
And it's that quickly.
And it's a way more intense sickness than fentanyl was.
Like, it went -- Brown dope was, like, hardly --
Like, you're hardly getting sick from that.
That was, like, nothing.
Fentanyl was a little bit worse.
But this tranq is intense.
Like, you feel like you're literally going to die.
-You've got sort of a cut on your neck.
-Yeah. It's --
-It looks painful.
-Yes, it's from interjecting with the xylazine, the tranq.
♪♪
Sometimes I muscle pop, intramuscular,
because this hurts so bad.
But when I intramuscular it, whatever's in it,
it's making those lesions, and I get holes,
and it just, like, eats away at your skin.
It's, like, not even about getting high anymore.
It's about not being sick.
[ Sniffing ]
♪♪
-See, it looks like we have about 700 advertisements
right now from 109 different suppliers.
-Wow.
Wow. -Yeah.
-109 suppliers.
-Yeah. -Just on this one site?
-Just on this one site.
♪♪
[ Indistinct conversations ]
♪♪
-One reason synthetic drugs are taking up so much space
in the drug supply here might surprise you --
U.S. foreign policy.
From 2014 to 2019,
much of North America's fentanyl supply came from one place.
-As you know, most of the fentanyl,
which is killing 80,000 Americans a year,
it comes through China.
-But in 2019, China,
under pressure from the Trump administration, banned fentanyl.
Seizures of fentanyl in the U.S. supply dropped that year,
only it didn't last long.
Companies in China pivoted, from selling fentanyl
to marketing substances that mimic its effects,
as well as the compounds that make it up.
Those compounds were bought by Mexican cartels,
who are now manufacturing fentanyl
and trafficking it back into the U.S.
Over 100,000 Americans died of a drug overdose
in the one-year period ending last November,
the most in U.S. history.
Jim Carroll was President Trump's drug czar.
He led the push to get China to ban fentanyl.
We have record overdoses in the U.S.,
and fentanyl is still pervasive,
so do you think that the ban was successful?
-It was successful because the flow of fentanyl
from China to the U.S. ended.
So that part was absolutely successful.
In terms of, you know, the number of Americans dying,
you know, clearly, right now, that's not a success.
And now, with more availability than ever before,
with the -- not only the amount of drugs
but the lethality of the drugs that are on the streets,
that's what's causing a rise in these fatal overdoses,
these poisonings that are taking place across the country.
-Were you worried about creating a vacuum for more potent drugs?
-We know and we knew back then
that eliminating China as the main source, direct source,
that the traffickers were not going to end that quickly.
We knew that they would take other steps
to get it into the U.S., but you have to try.
You have to stop it as much as you can.
-Our reporting has shown
that there's actually new tranquilizers and benzos
that are now being cut into the fentanyl supply.
And so that's making the fentanyl supply
even more dangerous.
More people are dying.
Were you concerned
about that being a possible consequence of the fentanyl ban?
-No.
At the beginning of this,
everyone called this the opioid crisis.
We don't have an opioid crisis.
We have an addiction crisis.
We don't know what drug, quite frankly, will be here
20 years from now.
We need to treat this as the disease we know it is
and make sure that we know
exactly what is coming into the U.S.
and try to curtail
the trafficking of drugs into the U.S.
-Do you feel any sense of responsibility
for some of these new chemicals
that are kind of replacing fentanyl?
-No. No. We knew the traffickers would continue to try.
We were able to get a ban on fentanyl.
We want to absolutely prohibit
all of these synthetics from coming in.
What we're seeing in some of these cities
is a switch to a new drug, a different drug.
It doesn't mean that they switched, you know,
because of something that, you know, we did wrong.
They're switching because that's what's available.
Traffickers, whether it's from China or Mexico
or someplace else,
will send whatever drug they have to the U.S.
in the hopes that someone will become addicted to it
and continue to buy it.
-Do you have faith in being able to stop the supply?
I mean, we've have had 50 years of the war on drugs,
and it hasn't really worked.
-It's worked when we've made a decision to stop it.
It made the difference when we went to China
and said, "Stop sending it to the U.S."
We were able to drive down
the availability of some of these drugs.
-But now it's worse than ever.
Teen overdoses are up, as well,
and apparently, it's due to the potency of the drugs.
-Right, because it's cheaper and easier
to have incredibly lethal synthetic drugs
than ever before.
-That's partly because the chemicals used
to make fentanyl, benzo dope, and tranq dope
are being sold online.
♪♪
-A lot of the supply chains
have kind of emerged through the Internet.
If you leave that out of the picture,
then you're missing a lot
of sort of that initial stage in the supply chain
of where some of the stuff is coming from.
-Nicole Cook is a narcotics analyst,
tracking websites advertising these drugs on the open web.
The websites can be sophisticated,
with high-quality photos, product descriptions,
and customer reviews.
The companies often list CAS numbers,
a string of digits that correspond with a known drug.
-The first step that I'll do
is I will search for the CAS number.
So if you don't know what it is
for a specific chemical that you're interested in,
you can really easily just bring it up on Google.
You can search for, for example, xylazine.
So, once you have the CAS number
for the chemical you're interested in,
then you just enter it in here.
And it will bring up sort of hundreds of advertisements
for the chemical that you're interested in.
So, see, it looks like we have about 700 advertisements
right now from 109 different suppliers.
-Wow.
Wow. -Yeah.
-109 suppliers.
-Yeah. -Just on this one site?
-Just on this one site.
So, here's another example of a xylazine advertisement.
Minimum order quality is 1 kilogram, so quite large.
But when you scroll down to the bottom of the advertisement,
you have this "Other hot products" section, where you see
it's just a list of, I don't know, maybe 20 or so.
And right away, to me, this jumps out.
This is a fentanyl precursor.
As far as I know, has nothing to do with animal tranquilizers
or any sort of veterinary purpose.
So this whole list here, I think,
is probably going to be pretty useless to you
if you're using xylazine in its, like, licit, intended purpose.
-But could be very useful if you were an illegal drug supplier.
-Sure, yeah, yeah.
-Do you think that these companies realize
that these chemicals are being diverted into the black market?
-I think that the way that they are advertised
suggests at least a knowledge of who the end user ends up being,
given that they're often bulking these chemicals together
with other ones that can be used for fentanyl synthesis.
Once a synthetic drug is controlled,
they will tweak the chemical structure of it
so that way, it's different enough
that it's not covered by the law,
but you still get the same sort of end effect.
-I feel like, I don't know, my head is spinning a bit,
because it just seems like
there are so many different avenues that you could pursue,
that if one gets shut down,
there's like a million other ones that you could chase.
-Yeah, and that's really the challenge
when it comes to regulating that side of the drug crisis
is that once you control a substance,
another one will just pop up in its place.
♪♪
-I thought that the second I mentioned fentanyl,
they would want to stop the conversation.
And instead, they're telling me that xylazine is hot in the USA,
you know, in response
to me asking if it's similar to fentanyl.
♪♪
[ Indistinct conversations ]
♪♪
-We wanted to contact a supplier
selling synthetic drugs on the open web.
After several attempts,
we managed to get through to a salesperson
for a chemical company based in Wuhan, China.
"I'm interested in some of your products.
Can you talk on the phone?"
♪♪
Oh. Typing.
♪♪
"Sorry, friend, WhatsApp unable to answer call."
Okay.
She's saying, "Which item are you interested in?"
So I asked if they carry xylazine,
and the response was, "Yes, friend, available.
Sent to USA?"
"Yes, I'm in the U.S.
Will there be any issues with customs?"
♪♪
"UPS, friend!
Guarantee safe delivery 100%."
I'm asking, "Do you know if you can combine this with fentanyl?"
meaning the xylazine.
She says, "Haha, friend, fentanyl banned in China.
We don't have it."
"Is xylazine similar to fentanyl? The effect of it."
She says, "I guess so, friend, as it's very hot in the USA."
I'm just surprised by their reaction.
I thought that the second I mentioned fentanyl,
they would want to stop the conversation.
And instead, they're telling me that xylazine is hot in the USA,
you know, in response
to me asking if it's similar to fentanyl.
"Do you know what it's being used for
in the U.S.?"
♪♪
"Friend, for safety, we never discuss with client
for the purpose.
Sometimes it's sensitive for clients!
And sometimes if clients told you
they use chemicals to make forbidden drug!
Then it's illegal for us to sell items to them."
I'm asking if these products are legal in the U.S.
♪♪
"They are legal in China, haha."
♪♪
I said, "What if it gets seized by U.S. police?"
They said, "We resend you."
So, very straightforward, very honest answers,
and it just makes it seem that much easier
to get your hands on pretty much any chemical you want.
Like, this isn't even the dark web.
♪♪
To address the crisis, President Joe Biden
is picking up where the last administration left off.
In March, he released his 2023 fiscal year budget.
It includes $18 billion
for domestic and international law enforcement
and to try to disrupt the flow of drugs into the U.S.
But Biden's also proposing
something no other president has done,
a historic $85 million specified for harm reduction services
like getting people fentanyl test strips, sterile syringes,
and naloxone.
Only, Congress still needs to pass it.
And even if they do,
dealers like Keisha warn it's not enough.
-The drugs are only going to get stronger.
Eventually, there's not going to be
anything to do with heroin or fentanyl.
It's going to be all chemical, all from the dark web,
all just something people have thrown in a bowl
and sold it as fent or heroin.
All the people I knew during when I was young, growing up,
to now, in the drug trade, they're all dead.
I don't see anybody -- Nobody's face is familiar anymore.
♪♪
-I could have been a athlete, but instead I chose the street,
pumping dope and holding heat.
Nothing but nightmares when I sleep.
I woke up so many cold and hungry nights up in that bing,
but -- I wouldn't change a thing.
-Almost two months after our trip to British Columbia,
we learned that Gord's body was found under a bridge.
He died of an overdose a month before his 40th birthday.
-Armed in lead, leaving them dead.
-- the feds. I'm dodging and weaving them
like Adrian Peterson.
-Yo. -Just something like that,
right, you know? -Not bad.
-I'm on some East Coast shit, right?
But I'm in the West, though, right?
I still got time.
But, like, I feel like it's closing in.
Right?
And I got to do something soon.
♪♪