The pipeline of deadly fentanyl to the US may be drying up, experts say

AFP/Getty images

This summer, Dan Ciccarone, a physician and street drug researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, sent a team to collect data on city streets in areas where illicit fentanyl has been a killer for years. They found something unexpected.

“The fentanyl supply is drying up for some reason,” Ciccarone said. “Hang around on the street, talk to people; the drugs are hard to find and more expensive.”

When street fentanyl began to proliferate in America’s street drug supply starting in 2012, most experts believed the deadly synthetic opioid was unstoppable. Fentanyl is cheap, easy to make and hugely profitable. The black market supply chain that fuels America’s demand for the drug is controlled by some of the most sophisticated and ruthless criminal gangs in the world.

But Ciccarone said he’s heard from street drug experts in the U.S. over the past six months who also saw significantly less fentanyl and fewer overdoses.

“I’m from Ohio, I’ve heard from West Virginia, and I’ve heard from Maryland and Arizona, and they’re all telling me the same thing: some kind of supply shortage on the streets,” he said.

There are skeptics, people who question this trend, but some of the top drug policy analysts in the US, as well as experts with close ties to street fentanyl markets, believe the data points to a major disruption in the deadly supply chain of fentanyl.

“It’s a development that many drug policy experts could not have anticipated,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution, who researches international criminal organizations that make and traffic fentanyl.

She said drug gangs appear to be trafficking less fentanyl and are also “adulterating” or diluting the potency of the fentanyl being sold. “Everyone is surprised by the extent of fentanyl adulteration,” Felbab-Brown said. “And even more importantly due to claims in certain places in the US that there is not enough fentanyl available.”

Researchers generally agree that there has been an “unprecedented” decline in fentanyl purity in some parts of the United States. Labs that test street fentanyl find that it is cut or diluted much more aggressively, often with an industrial chemical known as BTMPS.

An industrial chemical mixed with fentanyl

“We’ve had samples that were all BTMPS and no fentanyl,” said Nabarun Dasgupta, a North Carolina addiction researcher who tests fentanyl samples collected from illicit drug markets across the country.

US Drug Enforcement Administration

Edward Sisco, a research chemist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology who helped analyze fentanyl samples, said it is a mystery why drug gangs would use BTMPS in fentanyl mixtures. There is no evidence that the substance causes users to get high.

“It is often used to prevent UV degradation of plastics, and it also has some other industrial applications,” Sisco said, adding that it appears the chemical is being deliberately added to fentanyl powders early in the supply chain, possibly in drug labs in Mexico. .

“When something new comes into the drug market, it usually comes into one geographic location. It’s very unusual to see (BTMPS) pop up all over the country at once,” he said.

Although BTMPS is considered toxic to humans, it does not cause overdoses or instant death.

Some drug policy experts believe these shifts in fentanyl supply are factors in the sudden national decline in fentanyl-related deaths, which fell by about 20% last year, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Dennis Cauchon, a harm reduction activist in Ohio, believes this pattern is visible in his state, where fatal overdoses have fallen even faster, by about a third, by 2024. “If you look at the share of fentanyl in Ohio’s drug supply, you can predict how many deaths there will be,” Cauchon said. “So the real question is, why has fentanyl decreased?”

This question is hotly debated by drug policy and addiction experts.

Are Mexican drug cartels and their Chinese partners finally feeling pressure?

AFP

Some analysts believe international pressure on Chinese companies making fentanyl precursor chemicals could be a factor. Others think a global crackdown on Mexican drug cartels smuggling fentanyl into the U.S. will finally impact the black market supply chain.

“Nearly 70,000 pounds of fentanyl were seized along the southwestern (U.S.) border in the 24 months ending in August 2024,” said Jen Daskal, President Biden’s deputy assistant on the National Security Council who focuses on fentanyl policy. “That is more fentanyl seized in the last two fiscal years than in the previous five years combined.”

Attacks are part of the strategy. The US has also steadily increased direct pressure on the Mexican cartels, in an effort to seize fentanyl profits, arrest top Sinaloa leaders and gain greater cooperation from the Chinese and Mexican governments.

Daskal acknowledged that drug deaths in the U.S. remain unacceptably high, but said the Biden administration’s fentanyl strategy shows progress: “We are seeing the effects in terms of lives saved.”

Last year, the cartels seemed to recognize the pressure. They have made public promises to curb fentanyl production and smuggling into the United States. The US Drug Enforcement Administration was skeptical of the gesture, calling it “a public relations stunt.”

But Brookings’ Felbab-Brown now believes there may have been a meaningful “disruption to U.S. supply” in Mexico. She says the cartels may also hope to reduce law enforcement attention on their activities by deliberately weakening the potency of street fentanyl.

“It could be their decision at the wholesale level to adulterate fentanyl to reduce mortality. If so, that remains a significant achievement by U.S. law enforcement, shaping markets and behavior.” , she said.

‘We have to be very careful about being too optimistic’

Not everyone is convinced that reducing the supply of fentanyl on American streets makes sense. Dan Salter leads a federal task force targeting drug traffickers in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Salter told NPR that in 2024 there has been a big drop in the amount of fentanyl turning up in drug busts in his part of the US. “We have seized almost 75 kilos of fentanyl so far this year,” he said. “In 2023 we will have seized 216 kilograms.”

But Salter says this is likely a temporary and modest supply disruption that is unlikely to last long: “I think we have to be very careful about being too optimistic.”

Rachel Winograd, a drug policy researcher at the University of Missouri-St. Louis is also skeptical that fentanyl pipeline disruptions are causing a decline in drug deaths, which have fallen 34% in Missouri.

“Drug seizures at the border and elsewhere have really increased in 2023,” she said. “But I don’t think that has anything to do with the decline, at least not here in Missouri.”

Winograd thinks other factors, including better addiction treatment and the spread of naloxone, an overdose drug, are bigger factors saving lives.

Experts agree that America’s street drug supply remains incredibly toxic and dangerous. Substances used to adulterate fentanyl, including BTMPS and xylazine, an equine tranquilizer also known as “tranq,” appear to cause fewer fatal overdoses but are still harmful to humans. Frontline harm reduction workers also fear that growing variability in fentanyl purity could put some users at risk as they try to control their doses.

Haven Wheelock, who works on the streets for an organization called Outside In in Portland, Oregon, said the sudden shift in fentanyl supply is causing some people with addiction to seek help. “Could it be a motivating factor for people to do something different when it comes to seeking treatment? Absolutely. It could also lead to riskier behavior,” she added.

Wheelock warned that some people with serious addiction might also inject fentanyl instead of smoking it, a practice considered more dangerous.

Ciccarone, the San Francisco street drug researcher, believes that an overall decline in the availability and purity of fentanyl has meaningfully slowed overdoses, contributing to a 15% drop in drug deaths in his city to date to this year.

“The only thing that could really explain this is a supply shock,” he said. “The fentanyl is drying up.”

Most experts interviewed by NPR agreed that the decline in fentanyl supply is significant and widespread, but said it will take months of research and more data to confirm whether the change will have a lasting impact.