In this ambitious project, El País shows how fentanyl has become a global crisis, involving criminal syndicates in Wuhan and Sinaloa, as well as addicts in the streets of Philadelphia and San Francisco; and stretching from a mayor’s office in Manzanillo, Mexico, to the halls of power in Washington, D.C. El País offers vignettes at what it describes as the various “stops” along fentanyl’s path:
Life—or what’s left of it—stops on Kensington Avenue every 10 minutes or so. It happens when the subway hums along the elevated tracks, a blue steel structure that flies over this Philadelphia street. The roar doesn’t allow you to think… but, at least for that moment, the problems at ground zero of the fentanyl crisis in the United States are put on hold.
Afterward, the addicts and the volunteers who help them, the dealers and the police, the YouTubers and the tourists attracted by the news, the armed merchants and the residents of this gigantic open-air drug market will return to the free-for-all fight under the tracks. Hundreds of people who are addicted to the powerful opioid—which is 50 times stronger than heroin—live and die on these streets. Some, like Daniel—who lost all his toes due to the cold—have been wandering around them for years. Others don’t make it past their first month here.
The fate of all of them begins about 2,500 miles away, next to a different set of train tracks: those that cross Culiacán, in the heart of Mexican drug trafficking territory. There, a fentanyl cook—who calls himself Miguel—carries out macabre experiments on a handful of consumers, who test the merchandise before it’s shipped off to the United States. They start with one dose: one third pure and the rest, cut. The “human guinea pigs” inject it in front of him. If they say, “No, it didn’t rock me, it didn’t put me to sleep, add more,” the percentage increases. Miguel assures EL PAÍS that no one has ever died from this process.
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