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  • Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic
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Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Ben Westhoff (Author), Alex Boyles (Narrator), Blackstone Audio, Inc. (Publisher)
4.5 out of 5 stars 480 ratings

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A deeply human story, Fentanyl, Inc. is the first deep-dive investigation of a hazardous and illicit industry that has created a worldwide epidemic, ravaging communities and overwhelming and confounding government agencies that are challenged to combat it.

“A whole new crop of chemicals is radically changing the recreational drug landscape,” writes Ben Westhoff. “These are known as Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS) and they include replacements for known drugs like heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, and marijuana. They are synthetic, made in a laboratory, and are much more potent than traditional drugs” - and all-too-often tragically lethal.

Drugs like fentanyl, K2, and Spice - and those with arcane acronyms like 25i-NBOMe - were all originally conceived in legitimate laboratories for proper scientific and medicinal purposes. Their formulas were then hijacked and manufactured by rogue chemists, largely in China, who change their molecular structures to stay ahead of the law, making the drugs’ effects impossible to predict. Westhoff has infiltrated this shadowy world. He tracks down the little-known scientists who invented these drugs and inadvertently killed thousands, as well as a mysterious drug baron who turned the law upside down in his home country of New Zealand.

Westhoff visits the shady factories in China from which these drugs emanate, providing startling and original reporting on how China’s vast chemical industry operates, and how the Chinese government subsidizes it. Poignantly, he chronicles the lives of addicted users and dealers, families of victims, law enforcement officers, and underground drug awareness organizers in the US and Europe. Together they represent the shocking and riveting full anatomy of a calamity we are just beginning to understand. From its depths, as Westhoff relates, are emerging new strategies that may provide essential long-term solutions to the drug crisis that has affected so many.

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  1. Listening Length
    12 hours and 38 minutes
  2. Author
    Ben Westhoff
  3. Narrator
    Alex Boyles
  4. Audible release date
    Sept. 3 2019
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Blackstone Audio, Inc.
  7. ASIN
    B07V7J6KVB
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
Next slide of product details

Product details

Listening Length 12 hours and 38 minutes
Author Ben Westhoff
Narrator Alex Boyles
Audible.ca Release Date September 03 2019
Publisher Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B07V7J6KVB
鶹 Rank

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4.5 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from Canada

  • Ben Daly
    5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible book and well reported and investigated
    Reviewed in Canada on January 11, 2025
    Verified Purchase
    Fentanyl, Inc. by Ben Westhoff is a gripping, investigative deep dive into the deadly global fentanyl trade. Westhoff explores the origins and rise of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid responsible for a significant portion of overdose deaths in the U.S. He follows the trail from Chinese chemical manufacturers to Mexican cartels and American drug distributors, painting a chilling picture of the vast network behind the crisis. The book combines hard-hitting journalism with personal stories, offering both a comprehensive look at the scale of the epidemic and a humanizing portrayal of its devastating impact.

    I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I am a first responder and deal with the effects of drugs and learning about the origins is very eye opening!
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  • Aidan
    4.0 out of 5 stars An imperfect book and some misguided criticisms
    Reviewed in Canada on September 15, 2019
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    I’ve seen others criticizing the author for the way he has portrayed the chemistry or how he has described/compared certain drug/compounds. To an extent these are fair criticisms, but on the other hand the author never promises or infers that his purpose was to provide a deeply scientific and technical deconstruction of these drugs/compounds.

    The primary purpose was to provide an overview of actors, causes and forces within the Fentanyl crisis. As such, he has consciously chosen to avoid complex discussions of molecular modelling to instead discuss topics such as: health and drug policy, pharmaceutical marketing, as well as the history of pain medicine r&d.

    That said, I believe that the author has done only a decent job of this. Too often, the author jumped to conclusions/connections, framed evidence in a manner meant solely to support his argument or simply restated well-known information as though it was the first time it was being reported.

    Overall, I’d recommend the book if you are looking for an easy and quick read (only 281 pages) that will provide a cursory overview of this modern crisis. But, if like me, you’re more wonkish in your interests, you’d be better spent reading something more technical or at least written by someone more well-versed in the fields of policy and science.

    Fair score is 3.5 to 4 stars.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • David Kennedy
    3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but with faults
    Reviewed in Canada on September 16, 2019
    The book is fairly well written but might be nice if the author stuck with the facts and less conjecture. The author uses statements like "mostly sourced in china" and such throughout the book. What facts allowed him to jump to that conclusion? It is if he has an anti China position and reinforces it at every opportunity. Just search the book and count the number of times he references china.

    Placing "blame" on foreign countries for manufacturing chemicals doesn't get us anywhere. I was hoping for more information on the socioeconomic aspect of why so many are turning to these potent drugs,not necessarily china bashing.
    3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • 鶹 Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Christmas present
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 7, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    A good christmas present
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  • Paolo
    5.0 out of 5 stars suggested reading
    Reviewed in Italy on July 2, 2024
    Verified Purchase
    the word Fentanyl is in the mouth of everyone nowadays, the world is changing, drugs are changing and the pharmaceutical high is increasingly substituting conventional recreational drugs, which explains deeply the opioid plague overseas.
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  • Brian LaRocca
    5.0 out of 5 stars America's Most Important Crisis
    Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    This book illimunates a topic which is poorly understood yet is quietly ruining generations of Americans: that of designer drugs. Ben Westhoff does a great job of spelling out the severity of the issue, takes the reader through its chemistry and production locations, and tells the heart wrenching effects it has had in the United States.

    Fentanyl was originally a breakthrough drug that allowed for pain reduction during surgery. It and its analogues have been hijacked in a movement away from plant based drugs to those concocted in labs. Many of the chemists behind the drugs fret about how they are now used: they allow for cheap production, are easy to smuggle and do not appear in drug tests.

    Westhoff somehow gains access to a drug facility in China. Amazingly, most of the production is done legally and often times benefit from Chinese subsidies. The owners know how to coyly move from one concoction to another to sidestep local laws. These newly created drugs have interactions that are unknown to anyone. Hanging over this narrative is the possible strategic benefit China may be gaining by drugging large swaths of citizens in the United States.

    From there, Mexican cartels (operating like "McDonalds") buy the product, cut it and distribute it through North America and Europe. Oddly, the US's ability to cut down on more natural drugs has created a market for designer drugs that can be made quietly in a lab and are easy to mail. The most concerning impact of all of this is that addicts who believe they are buying a natural drug in which they know the dosage are now buying products of unknown provenance. 93% of users would prefer to use traditional marijuana over synthetics and its most likely a similar story for those who use N-bombs over LSD. However, instead of getting the right products, they are taken chemicals never ingested by humans before (something like 90% of MDMA tested was not MDMA).

    Numbers on the problem:
    -Carfentanil was responsible for killing more than eleven hundred Ohio residents between July 2016 and June 2017 alone.
    -American cocaine overdose deaths remained fairly steady throughout the first decade of the 2000s—ranging from roughly four thousand to seven thousand—but in the second decade began to surge, exceeding fourteen thousand in 2017.
    -According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 150 new illicit drugs were bought and sold between 1997 and 2010. Another 150 appeared in just the next three years, and since then, in some years as many as 100 new chemicals have appeared, with synthetic cannabinoids especially common.
    -In 2012, St. Louis saw 92 opioid-related deaths, a number that rose to 123 in 2013 and up to 256 in 2017.

    Exacerbating all of this is that the number of addicts increased dramatically during the prescription opioid crisis. The author mentions the anecdote that in Kermit, WV (population 400, nine million pills were distributed in two years. And in one of the (sadly) more prescient thoughts by a politician, Arlen Specter attacked a mere monetary settlement against Perdue Pharma in 2007 by saying, "I see fines with some frequency and think that they are expensive licenses for criminal misconduct. I do not know whether that applies in this case, but a jail sentence is a deterrent and a fine is not.”

    Westhoff suggests not blaming China as they have often been very strict in drug enforcement. Also, supply can easily move to other countries such as India. Better to focus on demand to limit the criminal element (great Friedman quote: "“See, if you look at the Drug War from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel, that’s literally true.” Policies in Slovenia and Spain are examined. Testing drugs for quality, supervised usage and decriminalization seem to help.
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  • Thomas Tansey
    5.0 out of 5 stars Fentanyl is the current wave in the tsunami of the opioid epidemic.
    Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    Fentanyl is the current craze for drug dealers and addicts, following on the heels of earlier crazes. In the 1980s crack cocaine was the rage. In the ensuing decades meth came into vogue, as did prescription drugs and heroin. Synthetic drugs, produced in the lab rather than in the field, joined the litany of illicit recreational drugs. Like the opioids such as fentanyl and its analogues, but also the likes of synthetic marijuana (which doesn't contain THC). Fentanyl, a pain killer, is fifty times stronger than morphine, a natural derivative of the opium plant.

    China is the major source of fentanyl. Chemical labs in that country produce the drug for global consumption. It's been available, in the United States and many other countries, via the Dark Web, but also through the surface web. The Chinese government didn't initially outlaw the production of fentanyl for export as a recreational drug. While China has its own drug-use problem, fentanyl isn't a drug of choice; meth is what the Chinese prefer, for instance. When pressure from other nations was put on the Chinese government to stop the production and foreign sales of fentanyl, China did outlaw the drug. But entrepreneurial chemical labs in China then started producing analogues of fentanyl for export. Such analogues were initially legal in China, even for export. With outside pressure a fentanyl analogue was scheduled in China and became illegal there. So the Chinese labs created different fentanyl analogues that were legal for a while. One after another they became illegal in China. Some labs then started just producing the ingredients to make a fentanyl analogue without assembling the final product. These precursor ingredients were shipped, for instance, to drug cartels in Mexico for final assembly, which products were then smuggled across the border into the United States. Right now China only weakly enforces its fentanyl-related drug laws (medical fentanyl is legally produced and used in China and can be exported to medical facilities).

    Some countries have set up harm-reduction programs and facilities to lessen the negative impact of illicit drug use. Switzerland, for instance, allows drug users to come into government-supervised facilities and get free injections of heroin. This approach insures that the drug users are getting clean needles and pure heroin in a measured dose that's not cut with the dangerous fentanyl. The Netherlands also has a harm-reduction program. So does Spain. The United States does not, although some cities do have free-needle programs, which at least cuts down on HIV and hepatitis transmission.

    This book will open your eyes and get you up to speed on the situation.
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  • James Wink
    4.0 out of 5 stars A Global Study of an Increasing Problem
    Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    The title is a little misleading - the book encompasses lab created drugs with Fentanyl being one component. Ben Westhoff writes an engaging and wide-ranging book that encompass raw material providers in China, an abandoned ICBM base that was used by a drug kingpin, and good Samaritans trying to minimize overdoses. Westhoff is strongly emphatic toward the victims and their family members.

    The main thesis of the book is that synthetic drugs are becoming more dangerous. Changes to how their manufacturing including more impurities have only made them deadlier. He advocates increasing information available to the users by allowing third-party groups to test for impurities. Most of these testing groups are on the margins of the law at best. Fentanyl, Inc is well written and combines an worldwide overview of the synthetic drug problem with passionate advocacy. I am not sure how realistic Westhoff's ideas are but they are fascinating change of pace from those wanting additional enforcement or rampant legalization.
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