# 178

The media need to dig deeper to provide reasonable facts regarding manufacture & sale of licit and illicit Fentanyl. They need to ditch the lone China/Mexico narrative and provide a well-measured description of how Licit and illicit Fentanyl is killing Americans.

Since COVID (2019), the media have gotten lazy and reporters/editors have evolved into projecting one major narrative for Fentanyl - its components are created in China and shipped to Mexico where they are mixed and mingled with other substances, then disguised and smuggled into the U.S. where our citizens are killed.

Since 1968, the FDA has authorized production and prescribed sale of Fentanyl trans-dermal patches, lollipops and a variety of other delivery methods…in the U.S.

The below article provides a basic history of licit manufacture of pharmaceutical Fentanyl for valid medical reasons/pain mitigation for real pain sufferers.

No reporting has quantified the relative volumes of the licit Fentanyl in relation to the volumes of illicit Fentanyl. No reporting has provided the 999+ other narratives:

For example:

Johnny’s friends learn that Johnny’s grandmother has stage 4 cancer and has been receiving prescribed, hig-dose, Fentanyl patches to control her excruciating pain.  Johnny’s friends steal some of the patches, cut them up and smoke them in a dope-pipe.  The Fentanyl quickly slows their respiration and heart-rate to zero, they flat-line and die.

Fentanyl is everywhere. It is not only found in the hands of drug dealers or in the bathrooms of thousands of libraries across the U.S. where users smoke or snort the substance - and occasionally are revived by Narcan. It is also found in most of the drug stores across America and probably in every hospital.

Clearly, illicit Fentanyl does not constitute 100% of the Fentanyl distributed & used in the U.S.  as illustrated in the “Johnny” story, above, not all OD deaths from Fentanyl result from illicit Fentanyl.

The media needs to make a serious effort to determine (perhaps with the input of the DEA and pharmaceutical Fentanyl producers) the “market share” of Fentanyl sources in the U.S. and drop their easy pattern of blaming China/Mexico.

Give us the facts. How many tons are produced in the U.S. lawfully?  How many unlawfully?

https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/fentanyl-go-wrong/