The Journal’s reporting, based on the complaint and numerous interviews, offers a vivid account of these people’s lives just before they died. But neither the complaint nor the story answers the central question on everybody’s mind: Why is there fentanyl in cocaine?
Since this story came out, multiple people have sent me DMs and emails asking: What the fuck? Why would “dealers” do this to their customers? What business sense does this make?
There’s a subtle thing I picked up on here. The government says the Delivery Service indeed sold the cocaine “laced” with fentnayl. But they do not say, nor am I aware that they are alleging, that the Delivery Service did the actual lacing. And that’s what I want to zoom in on here: 1) At what level in the supply chain was the fentanyl mixed into cocaine? and 2) Why is this happening? (...)
The events I’m writing about ocurred during March 2021.
Why do dealers add fentanyl to cocaine?
Most dealers are not doing this. When something terrible like this does happen, I think it says much more about the state of the drug market and its structural dynamics than the people who are working in that market.
The main reason I’ve heard from researchers and analysts about the cocaine-fentanyl phenomenon is that there is simply too much illicit fentanyl being manufactured. There is way too much fentanyl and not nearly enough of the old school agriculturally produced drugs like cocaine and heroin that people very much want and seek out. This is a supply-side problem, not a demand-side problem. There is a surplus of street fentanyl out there and this excess fentanyl supply has to go somewhere. Someone, somewhere, is on the hook for it.
The illicit drug supply chain, like all markets today, is complex and multi-layered. And I think that market dynamics happenning above the retail sales level (e.g. The Delivery Service) is where this excess/surplus fentanyl gets mixed into cocaine. It could be happening via some accidental contamination. A brick of fentanyl accidentally gets added to cocaine and nobody notices. Then drug buyers who work closer to the retail-level make a bulk purchase and they get stuck with contaminated product.
Those who run retail-level sales operations typically go through middle-men who act as a go between, seperating the street level from bigger brokers and regional distributors. My speculation is that the fentanyl is being mixed into cocaine supplies at these upper-levels of the market, perhaps several rungs above the retail-level.
In this Manhattan case, it appears the Delivery Service eventually realized something was wrong with their product. I think the evidence in the complaint makes the case that it was not them who did the actual lacing. After they already made some sales of a “new batch” it seemed they realized their drugs were tainted and something was going very wrong.
I want to start with one part of the complaint that appeared in the WSJ article that really stuck out to me. It’s a text message exchange between one of the now deceased customers, Amanda Scher, a social worker, and the dispatcher. “On that March day, Ms. Scher texted a number stored in her phone as ‘Jason Melissa’” to place a cocaine order.
From the WSJ piece, based on the complaint, “The day after the deliveries, Mr. Rainey sent Mr. Ortega screenshots of home drug testing kits, and Mr. Ortega switched to a different phone to take drug orders, prosecutors alleged.” Mr. Ortega and Mr. Rainey are defendants in the case, accused of running the “narcotics conspiracy.”
It seems that the Delivery Service eventually realized their batch was tainted, and that doesn’t mean it was them who did the lacing. Maybe they knowingly bought a bad batch and had no other sources, so they bought it tried to fix it. Maybe the realized their batch was bad after using a fentanyl test strip, and then sent panicked messages to their customers.
Based on the frenzy of calls and messages to their customers, one thing that seems unlikely is that this delivery service wanted to intentionally harm or poison people. The DEA often labels drug dealers as cold-blooded murderers; predators who prey on people suffering with addiction, who don’t care about safety or human life. The messages sent by The Service to their customers that were obtained by law enforcement do not sound like cold-blood murderers. The Service sounds like people who are scared.
But this whole ordeal is also also confusing. Because it appears that this wasn’t the first time that the Delivery Service sold “bad” cocaine. The text messages between the social worker and the Delivery Service add another layer to this story. The social worker wanted to place an order with the service, but she told them that she had to get rid of her last batch because it was so bad. Was that batch also cut with fentanyl? Was that batch just very weak? What was going on there?
Again, I can only speculate based on what I know about the drug market right now.
I think this particular service struggled to obtain quality product. I think they realized something was wrong with their product, which they likely bought from a mid-level supplier above them in the supply chain. Maybe the Delivery Service bought drugs as they usually do but this batch was contaminated and they were stuck with what they got.
The retail-level sellers at the bottom of the supply-chain, the people who itnerface with customers, were maybe left with only bad choices. That’s the nature of prohibition markets. If they ditch the bad batch and don’t sell it, then they are likely to lose out on a lot of money. So they see selling it as their only choice. What do they do? They try to cut it. They try to dilute it. They try to make do with what they’ve got, just as many small businesses in America do.
Unless they’re good chemists, the retail-level attempts to fix their product isn’t really going to work. Especially with a cocaine and fentanyl combo, where customers are using their five senses to test the quality of the drug all the time. They taste it. They smell it. They look at it. Then finally they feel it. They are feeling for a stimulating cocaine high, which is the opposite of what fentanyl does. The consistency, taste, smell, and psychoactive effect are all wrong. Perhaps that’s why the social worker “had to get rid” of the last batch. Maybe she got lucky that time and survived because she only did a tiny bit and got rid of it.
After that incident, the Delivery Service maybe had the same product and they tried to do something to improve the quality and called it “a new batch.” This is something I’ve seen dealers do a lot. They say they’ve got something good, something new, but it’s the same old junk. It’s like a crappy sale at Kohl’s. Customers arrive all excited only to see the stuff on sale is the boring shit they don’t want.
Interestingly, the social worker responded that the new batch was “def better.” Maybe the Delivery Service bought better cocaine and added it to the bad batch. But the fentanyl was still there. At first taste, the cocaine hit them first, so they used more and more. And the fentanyl crept up.
Fentanyl can hit fast, but snorting still takes roughly 10 minutes to really hit. It’s not like the movies. The effects of snorting are not instantaneous. Using this bad batch, the unwitting user is in a totally precarious place and could very well die if they’re alone and no one is there with naloxone to revive them. It seems that was the case in each of these three deaths. The social worker, the lawyer, and the finance executive used alone and died.
Most dealers are not doing this. When something terrible like this does happen, I think it says much more about the state of the drug market and its structural dynamics than the people who are working in that market.
The main reason I’ve heard from researchers and analysts about the cocaine-fentanyl phenomenon is that there is simply too much illicit fentanyl being manufactured. There is way too much fentanyl and not nearly enough of the old school agriculturally produced drugs like cocaine and heroin that people very much want and seek out. This is a supply-side problem, not a demand-side problem. There is a surplus of street fentanyl out there and this excess fentanyl supply has to go somewhere. Someone, somewhere, is on the hook for it.
The illicit drug supply chain, like all markets today, is complex and multi-layered. And I think that market dynamics happenning above the retail sales level (e.g. The Delivery Service) is where this excess/surplus fentanyl gets mixed into cocaine. It could be happening via some accidental contamination. A brick of fentanyl accidentally gets added to cocaine and nobody notices. Then drug buyers who work closer to the retail-level make a bulk purchase and they get stuck with contaminated product.
Those who run retail-level sales operations typically go through middle-men who act as a go between, seperating the street level from bigger brokers and regional distributors. My speculation is that the fentanyl is being mixed into cocaine supplies at these upper-levels of the market, perhaps several rungs above the retail-level.
In this Manhattan case, it appears the Delivery Service eventually realized something was wrong with their product. I think the evidence in the complaint makes the case that it was not them who did the actual lacing. After they already made some sales of a “new batch” it seemed they realized their drugs were tainted and something was going very wrong.
I want to start with one part of the complaint that appeared in the WSJ article that really stuck out to me. It’s a text message exchange between one of the now deceased customers, Amanda Scher, a social worker, and the dispatcher. “On that March day, Ms. Scher texted a number stored in her phone as ‘Jason Melissa’” to place a cocaine order.
“Question first,” Ms. Scher wrote.The WSJ piece shows the Delivery Service then making a bunch of panicked phone calls and texts to the customers hours after they purchased their orders. Around six hours after the “cocaine” delivery to the young lawyer, her phone pinged and it was the DeliveryService:
“Is it the same as it was Sunday? Because that was not good lol, had to get rid of it.”
“No new…Batch,” came the reply.
“Def better,” Ms. Scher texted about two hours after the delivery.
Texts came in from the delivery-service number:
“Hey try not to do too much because it’s really strong”
“Hey boss lady you heard”
“Lol”
“Hey”The same thing happened to the social worker. After “cocaine” was delivered to her, the Delivery Service made three FaceTime audio calls to her phone that went unanswered. Then came a text the next morning: “Hey can you give me a call back I need to ask you something real fast.”
“Hey you there”
Seven calls came in that night and the next morning from the delivery-service number.
From the WSJ piece, based on the complaint, “The day after the deliveries, Mr. Rainey sent Mr. Ortega screenshots of home drug testing kits, and Mr. Ortega switched to a different phone to take drug orders, prosecutors alleged.” Mr. Ortega and Mr. Rainey are defendants in the case, accused of running the “narcotics conspiracy.”
It seems that the Delivery Service eventually realized their batch was tainted, and that doesn’t mean it was them who did the lacing. Maybe they knowingly bought a bad batch and had no other sources, so they bought it tried to fix it. Maybe the realized their batch was bad after using a fentanyl test strip, and then sent panicked messages to their customers.
Based on the frenzy of calls and messages to their customers, one thing that seems unlikely is that this delivery service wanted to intentionally harm or poison people. The DEA often labels drug dealers as cold-blooded murderers; predators who prey on people suffering with addiction, who don’t care about safety or human life. The messages sent by The Service to their customers that were obtained by law enforcement do not sound like cold-blood murderers. The Service sounds like people who are scared.
But this whole ordeal is also also confusing. Because it appears that this wasn’t the first time that the Delivery Service sold “bad” cocaine. The text messages between the social worker and the Delivery Service add another layer to this story. The social worker wanted to place an order with the service, but she told them that she had to get rid of her last batch because it was so bad. Was that batch also cut with fentanyl? Was that batch just very weak? What was going on there?
Again, I can only speculate based on what I know about the drug market right now.
I think this particular service struggled to obtain quality product. I think they realized something was wrong with their product, which they likely bought from a mid-level supplier above them in the supply chain. Maybe the Delivery Service bought drugs as they usually do but this batch was contaminated and they were stuck with what they got.
The retail-level sellers at the bottom of the supply-chain, the people who itnerface with customers, were maybe left with only bad choices. That’s the nature of prohibition markets. If they ditch the bad batch and don’t sell it, then they are likely to lose out on a lot of money. So they see selling it as their only choice. What do they do? They try to cut it. They try to dilute it. They try to make do with what they’ve got, just as many small businesses in America do.
Unless they’re good chemists, the retail-level attempts to fix their product isn’t really going to work. Especially with a cocaine and fentanyl combo, where customers are using their five senses to test the quality of the drug all the time. They taste it. They smell it. They look at it. Then finally they feel it. They are feeling for a stimulating cocaine high, which is the opposite of what fentanyl does. The consistency, taste, smell, and psychoactive effect are all wrong. Perhaps that’s why the social worker “had to get rid” of the last batch. Maybe she got lucky that time and survived because she only did a tiny bit and got rid of it.
After that incident, the Delivery Service maybe had the same product and they tried to do something to improve the quality and called it “a new batch.” This is something I’ve seen dealers do a lot. They say they’ve got something good, something new, but it’s the same old junk. It’s like a crappy sale at Kohl’s. Customers arrive all excited only to see the stuff on sale is the boring shit they don’t want.
Interestingly, the social worker responded that the new batch was “def better.” Maybe the Delivery Service bought better cocaine and added it to the bad batch. But the fentanyl was still there. At first taste, the cocaine hit them first, so they used more and more. And the fentanyl crept up.
Fentanyl can hit fast, but snorting still takes roughly 10 minutes to really hit. It’s not like the movies. The effects of snorting are not instantaneous. Using this bad batch, the unwitting user is in a totally precarious place and could very well die if they’re alone and no one is there with naloxone to revive them. It seems that was the case in each of these three deaths. The social worker, the lawyer, and the finance executive used alone and died.
by Zachary Siegel, Substance | Read more:
Image: via
"None of which is to say that fentanyl isn’t actually dangerous when used and (I know you know this) anyone out there using right now should be especially careful. It’s just that it quite simply does not attack you like a sentient alien molecule riding on the air from host body to host body as the cops would have us believe.
The reason they want us to believe it does is obvious to anyone reading this but just to lay it out anyway the more dangerous the job of a cop appears and the more that idea is laundered through the media the harder it becomes for people to push back against anything they say or do never mind get anywhere remotely near something like defunding them. After all look at how valiant they are out there risking their lives every day to rid the streets of the scourge of dangerous drugs. For us.
It also provides further justification for destroying the lives of the people they arrest for possession of said drugs. If people like this can use drugs this dangerous they must naturally be inhuman....
Plenty of drug users also know right off the jump that these overdose stories are fake. If fentanyl was really deadly to the touch or somehow magically defied gravity and lingered in the air, people everywhere would be dropping like flies. And yet, it’s only cops who seem susceptible to fentanyl’s magical properties."
