This blog will no longer be updated, but Ben Westhoff’s Substack newsletter, Drugs + Hip-Hop is updated regularly. Go there!
Speaking in Mexico City
I spoke at a book festival in Mexico City this weekend, and it was a blast. A diplomatic organization called Instituto Matías Romero brought me out, at the behest of Mexican foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon, who enjoyed Fentanyl, Inc. You can see the Spanish language version of the book in the photo above, called La fiesta se acabó, though my presentation was in English. (Sorry Senorita Tellería!) I spoke to budding diplomats about my undercover infiltration of Chinese fentanyl operations, and about the China-Mexico-US synthetic drug pipeline. Before I left on this trip, everyone warned me to be careful about the cartels, but they don’t have great influence in Mexico City. In any case, I could hardly recommend the place more; great vegan food!
Here’s more information about my speaking engagements; I’ve been presenting at summits, conferences, and other events across the country this year, so please reach out if you’re interested.
Little Brother Launch Event and Cool Promotion
My new book Little Brother: Love, Tragedy and My Search for the Truth is now available! You can get it wherever books are sold, but here’s a particularly cool promotion: If you order from Rainy Day Books, I will not only sign it, but inscribe whatever message you like. (So long as it’s not something objectionable, like “Go Cubs.”)
If you live in St. Louis, come to the book’s launch event on Wednesday, May 25 at 7 pm at the Ethical Society, 9001 Clayton Road. I’ll be talking about Jorell and his case, and showing slides of us over the years. It should be a memorable evening!
You can read the book’s introduction via this excerpt from the Riverfront Times, and here’s my interview with St. Louis Public Radio and a profile in St. Louis Magazine.
Little Brother Available For Pre-order
My new book Little Brother: Love, Tragedy, and My Search for the Truth (May 24, 2022, Hachette Books) is now available for pre-order. Please do!
Little Brother Teaser
Little Brother cover and release date
My next book has a cover and a release date! Little Brother: Love, Tragedy, and My Search For the Truth comes out May 24, 2022 on Hachette Books. It’s about my search for the man who killed my mentee in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, Jorell Cleveland. Here’s my original obituary for Jorell; Little Brother is about what happened in the five years since. You can read more information about the book here, and pre-order it here.
Come Hang Out With Me in Las Vegas!
Join me for this psychedelic wellness event on November 6 in Las Vegas. This code will get you a 20% discount on tickets: WESTHOFFNAUT
Dr. Dre's Children: How Many Does He Have, and Who Are Their Mothers?
This is an excerpt from Ben Westhoff’s award-winning book, Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap
Andre Young — who would later become known as Dr. Dre — fathered his first child with a woman named Cassandra Joy Greene. The boy, named Curtis, was born when Dre was 16, though he wouldn’t acknowledge Curtis until decades later.
Around the same time, Dre also began talking to a 14-year-old student named Lisa Johnson. Raised in South Central, Johnson more recently lived on the West side of L.A. Her dad was out of the picture and her brother had been killed in gang violence. Andre seduced her when she was in ninth grade, she said, but their relationship was controversial from the start. Johnson’s mother thought she was too young to be dating, so the pair ditched school to meet secretly.
“Then, one day, I received that phone call--the call that all moms of teenagers dread,” wrote Andre’s mother Verna Griffin in her memoir. Johnson was pregnant.
She started tenth grade at Fremont, but only lasted a couple of weeks. “I was pregnant and they didn’t want me on school campus,” she said. To make things worse, a rift developed between Johnson and her mother, who was furious at her daughter for the pregnancy. She threw Johnson out of the house.
It was January, 1983 when Johnson gave birth to their first daughter, La’Tanya. Johnson was 15 and Andre was 17. “He was a real proud father at the time,” Johnson said. Before long, however, Andre had gotten another young woman pregnant, named LaVetta Washington. Their girl Tyra was born in May, 1984. Johnson was furious. She, too, was pregnant again.
The birth of La’Toya in September, 1984 didn’t smooth things over. A few days before Christmas that year, according to a police document, he “hit me in the mouth and bust my lip” [sic] at Johnson’s mother’s house. Then one day in April 1985, Andre came calling to her aunt’s home in South Central, where she was then living. He had recently turned 20, and she was pregnant with their third daughter -- Andre’s fifth child. She said she didn’t want to see him anymore because he wasn’t paying child support, and he then knocked her down twice, states the document.
Johnson’s allegations against Andre were never ruled upon in court, because she did not file criminal charges. But her aunt helped her apply for a combined child support order and domestic violence restraining order, and on May 29, 1985, Judge Pro Tem Lee B. Ragins ordered Andre to stay at least 100 yards away from Johnson, and to pay $200 a month child support for each girl.
He ignored both directives, Johnson claimed. “He didn’t do any child support, and he did not stop contacting me,” she said, adding that he did not contribute financially to the kids’ upbringing until a court compelled him to do so in the ‘90s, long after he’d become a major star with N.W.A, and as a solo artist.
Young and Johnson would have another daughter together, named Ashley Young, born in November, 1985. Beyond Lisa Johnson, three other women would later accuse Andre of beating them, including a mother of one of his other children, Michel’le. (Dr. Dre declined comment.)
***
Michel’le is today thought of as a precursor to Mary J. Blige or Beyonce. Dr. Dre and DJ Yella co-produced her 1989 debut Michel’le. Her hit song “Something in My Heart” dealt with her and Dre’s actual relationship: Baby if we try / Things will get better / No one can tell me different.
The magic of her musical partnership with Dre didn’t always translate to real life. He began seeing J.J. Fad’s MC J.B. “I busted them in the bed together,” Michel’le said. (MC J.B. confirmed this account, adding that the two women have since “put this all behind us and we are cordial with each other.”)
Eventually Dre and J.B. broke off, and he and Michel’le became more serious. They got engaged – he gave her an eight carat rock -- though never married, and he fathered children with other women while they were together.
During a tour with MC Hammer in 1990 she found out she was pregnant, and bore Dre’s son, named Marcel, in early 1991. She stayed at home with Marcel, and her career slowed. “[Dre] didn’t want to see [Marcel], and he didn’t want to support him on the right level,” she said, adding that she was forced to take him to court for child support. Still he eventually made things right: “When my mom and my grandma died, he came into my son’s life. They have a good relationship.”
***
Two of Dre’s children would attempt to break into the industry as rappers. Dre first met his eldest son Curtis when the boy turned 21 (a paternity test confirmed the relationship), and he rapped as both Curtis Young and Hood Surgeon.
Dre hasn’t been particularly involved in his career, nor that of his daughter La’Toya Young, also known as Manaj. She complained loudly about this in her 2008, self-made documentary, Daddy’s Shadow, in which she tried unsuccessfully to confront him at his Sherman Oaks studio, and bemoaned that he hadn’t signed her or funded a label of her own.
At the end of the film she says that its production had so angered her father that he ceased paying her rent, at least temporarily. The viewer is left feeling sympathy for both perspectives; Manaj is a strong rapper, but Dre’s desire to see his daughter chart a more stable career path is understandable.
**
Nineteen ninety-six was the major turning point year in Andre Young’s life. He married his girlfriend Nicole Threatt, the ex-wife of Sedale Threatt, a Lakers star who was then winding down a career with five NBA teams. Nicole and Sedale had a boy named Tyler together, which Dre helped raise as his own. He and Nicole had two more children as well, including a son named Truice, and a daughter named Truly.
Nicole and Andre married in a small ceremony in front of the ocean at the Four Seasons in Maui. Before filing for divorce in June, 2020, they were together for more than two decades, with Nicole supporting him through the tragic 2008 death of his son Andre Young Jr., from an overdose of heroin and morphine.
All told, Andre Young has fathered at least ten children. He has faced paternity lawsuits, and has been forced to pay child support.
The story continues in Ben Westhoff’s award-winning book, Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap
Fentanyl, Inc. in Paperback
Fentanyl, Inc. is now available in paperback. This edition is updated and expanded, with new reporting, stories, and information about the evolution of the fentanyl crisis.
To celebrate the release, I'll be in virtual conversation with professor Rachel Winograd on Thursday, Sept. 24 at 7 pm CDT on Facebook Live. We will discuss my infiltration of Chinese drug labs, the impact COVID-19 has had on the fentanyl epidemic, and how fentanyl became the deadliest drug in U.S. history. Here’s all of the information. Hope to see you there!
My newsletter, "Drugs + Hip-Hop"
My newsletter Drugs + Hip-Hop incorporates topics from my books Fentanyl, Inc., which investigates the worst drug crisis in American history, and Original Gangstas, a history of West Coast gangsta rap.
These seem like separate worlds, but they’re not. Synthetic drugs are taking over hip-hop culture, and the opioid crisis is hitting underprivileged communities mercilessly. I specialize in on-the-ground, deep investigative reporting, and my award-winning work has documented everything from how Tupac spawned a social justice movement to how the Chinese state subsidizes fentanyl production.
Once or twice a week I’ll send out a dispatch about hip-hop, or drugs, or both, including an EPIC countdown of the 25 best rap artists in history, called The Hip-Hop 25. These are long essays featuring rare photos and my never-published interviews with members of acts including Outkast, Run-DMC, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, N.W.A, and many more. I’ll also discuss my undercover infiltrations of Chinese fentanyl operations in 2018, in Wuhan and Shanghai. For the first time, I’ll reveal how I did it, publishing my conversations with the darkweb fentanyl dealers and salespeople I met along the way.
Sign up here for a ridiculously low price. Yearly subscribers get an autographed copy of one of my books, and Westhoff literary swag like bookmarks.
I’m excited to have you along for this ride!
Meet Portland’s Biggest Fentanyl Dealer and the Dominatrix Who Loved Him
That’s the title of my article in the latest issue of Portland Monthly, about the bumbling adventures of a pair of lovers from Oregon. Fentanyl, Inc. readers will recognize their names — Brandon Hubbard and Channing Lacey — from the book’s introduction. It was Hubbard who sold the fentanyl that killed 18-year-old Bailey Henke, setting off the largest fentanyl investigation in history. It’s a dark story with comic overtones, largely revolving around Lacey’s attempts to dig up a tomato-sized ball of fentanyl Hubbard hid in the backyard before going to prison.
Brandon’s favorite vegetable was a tomato, and I thought he would understand that was code. So I was trying to ask, ‘What window was the tomato out of?’ and ‘How fucking far down are the tomatoes?’ I got tired of sitting outside at night, digging up holes.
Coronavirus slowing the fentanyl trade?
Yuancheng headquarters in Wuhan
When I traveled to Wuhan in early 2018 to investigate the world’s largest distributor of fentanyl ingredients, no one had heard of the city. Located in Central China, it is known for spicy foods and top universities, and, with its 11 million population, sometimes compared to Chicago. It is also home to Yuancheng, the chemical conglomerate selling more fentanyl precursors than any other company; their biggest clients are Mexican cartels.
Since coronavirus emerged, the number one question people ask me is if it will it slow the global fentanyl trade. After all, the virus may or may not have originated at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan; regardless, the city was hit first. The Chinese government very quickly quarantined, stifling both Wuhan’s legitimate and illicit chemical industry.
Yuancheng falls somewhere in between, as its fentanyl precursors and anabolic steroids are legal in China, yet shipped in fake packaging and smuggled into the U.S. Here’s my Fentanyl, Inc. excerpt in The Atlantic about the company’s business practices, and my LA Times editorial about how the Chinese government subsidized it and other companies making fentanyl products.
Even before coronavirus, Yuancheng had its own problems. I’ll share more details in the revised-and-updated Fentanyl, Inc. paperback edition (out September 22), but suffice it to say my investigation may have damaged them. The quarantine and other effects of coronavirus helped slow the global distribution of fentanyl products, leading to scarcity and price increases in the U.S. These have had some positive effects; an Ohio harm reduction worker told Emanuel Sferios that many opioid users were getting prescriptions for methadone and suboxone as a result.
Unfortunately this may be a short-term phenomenon. Wuhan is already returning to normal, though the government is closely monitoring citizens’ WeChat accounts to make sure they’re not socializing with the wrong people. But coronavirus may have spurred permanent changes in the fentanyl precursor supply. Former Special Agent with the DEA Terry Cole said that the Mexican cartels are taking the opportunity to set up operations making fentanyl ingredients themselves, with the help of corruptible chemistry professors, cutting out China all together.
The short answer is that coronavirus has dented the fentanyl trade. The long answer is that fentanyl will find its way back. And since synthetic drugs are the future of all drugs, it will likely come back worse than ever.
My Favorite Books of the Year
I'm happy to report that Fentanyl, Inc. has been included on many "best book of the year" lists, including from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Buzzfeed, Kirkus, Daily Telegraph, and Tyler Cowen. If you celebrate Christmas, or another holidays with gifts, please consider Fentanyl, Inc. for a loved one. You can get it here. If you want to buy a signed copy email me at ben.westhoff@gmail.com, and I'll tell you how to make it happen by the 25th.
Here are my favorite books I read this year. Some of them came out in previous years -- and one hasn't come out yet -- but they're all great.
Non-fiction
Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration by Bryan Caplan
Better than a million hours of cable news! I didn't begin this book believing in open borders, but by the end I did. Immigration is complicated, but Caplan explains the potential ramifications of each policy possibility. He advocates for his position but also expresses opposing views in good faith. The illustrations are fantastic; surprisingly, a graphic novel is the perfect format for this message.
American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West by Nate Blakeslee
American Wolf has perhaps the smoothest narrative I've ever read. From the first pages I was riveted by these wolves romping around Yellowstone and its surroundings, even though they aren't so much as given a name; the park rangers must be apolitical about laws relating to wolves, and so as not to overly endear the animals to the public only refer to them by numbers. American Wolf goes down so damn easy, like mousse, yet you also learn stuff about conservation law, western politics, evolution, and, you know, how mother wolves gorge themselves on elk carcass and then hobble back to the den, whereupon they vomit up a bit for their pups.
Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir by Linda Ronstadt
I didn't grow up a Linda Ronstadt fan. I probably just knew her from "Don't Know Much" with Aaron Neville, and somehow didn't realize she was a superstar. The Beyonce of her time, as she's called. Simple Dreams isn't a tell-all; she's very discreet, and in fact barely mentions her relationship with California governor Jerry Brown. But the lack of dish doesn't detract; she focuses on craft, in a readable way. (Believe me this is difficult to do.) Her message is inspiring -- that by following her musical bliss, even to the chagrin of her record labels, she found huge success and artistic fulfillment across genres, from country and mariachi to old standards.
Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine by Joe Hagan
Hagan had full access to Wenner, Wenner's celebrity friends (Jagger, Springsteen, Dylan, Yoko Ono), and to every shard of ephemera tracing the magazine's history, which Wenner himself squirreled away over the years for just such an occasion. Unfortunately for the Rolling Stone founder, the portrait is mostly unflattering, as Sticky Fingers portrays him as a starfucker desperate for celebrity affirmation, squandering the magazine's profits on drugs and home luxuries in an attempt to fill a hole inside himself. I've always wanted to be famous, and assumed everyone did, despite the fact that fame ruins many lives that it touches. Hagan gives the reader permission to blame Wenner for this condition, pegging him as the creator of our celebrity worship culture. Stick Fingers is a bleak portrait; it's hard to imagine writing 500+ pages with such little sympathy for one's subject. But the book is hard to put down because it contains such incredible gossip. Each page features Wenner interacting with famous music stars, and in many cases trying to sleep with them.
The Dawn of Eurasia: On the Trail of the New World Order by Bruno Macaes
As with Open Borders and many of my favorite published pieces this year, I was introduced to The Dawn of Eurasia through Tyler Cowen's blog, and this book in particular has changed my life, opening up my understanding of (and interest in) geopolitics, in a way that The New York Times and The Economist has never done. The author is a former cabinet member of the Portuguese government, and knows what's actually happening behind the scenes in governments all over the world -- what, say, Russia's actions towards Turkey, or China, or Ukraine really mean. There's lots about China, Europe, India, and Central Asia, but the most interesting stuff (and, really, the bulk of the book) is about Russia. I'd long thought of Russia as a fallen power, but The Dawn of Eurasia shows just how central the country will be in determining the new world order. You don't have to be a policy wonk to appreciate this book, which makes me want to travel the world, learn about distant cultures, and soak up life.
Fiction
Your Duck Is My Duck by Deborah Eisenberg
You don't always know what's happening when these stories begin; critical information is withheld, the dialogue is opaque. Eisenberg's writing is like an alluring stranger who walks into the room -- you want to know more, you want to understand. Eventually, all is revealed, and all six stories in Your Duck Is My Duck are home runs. They contemplate what's beyond and what's right in front of you. From one sentence to the next they're hilarious and devastating, modern-feeling and timeless. Thanks to my good friend Kai Flanders, who recommended this book and the next one.
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
A joy! It's deep, but accessible, and feels at times like a non-fiction history of the logging of the Pacific Northwest woods. Most of it takes place in the Idaho panhandle, in the not-so-distant past (the first half of the 20th century) when there was little technology, connectivity, healthcare, or other conveniences we take for granted. It wasn't so long ago -- our grandparents were in their heydays -- and yet life could hardly be more different. It was also miserable, at least for loggers. What Johnson has done is imagine a world, the real world that once was, and filled it with life. It's as impressive as a science fiction world, or perhaps more so because Johnson's characters and their emotions ring true.
Fire Sermon by Jamie Quatro
This is one of my favorite novels of the past few years, along with Euphoria by Lily King and History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund. Coincidentally (or, rather, not!) they are all edited by the same person, Elisabeth Schmitz of Grove Atlantic. Not to downplay the efforts of Quatro, or writers generally, but the art of editing is rarely talked about, perhaps equivalent to that of a producer in music. I'd listen to any Jack Antonoff or Ariel Rechtshaid album, no matter who is singing, and the same is true with Schmitz's novels; something about how she balances straight-ahead, white-knuckle story-telling with inner monologues. In any case, Fire Sermon is like 40 Shades of Gray for the Christian intellectual, though you don't have to be either of those things.
Writers & Lovers by Lily King
As mentioned above, King's previous novel Euphoria is one of favorites, and while this one is less grand in scope -- swapping a glamorous, game-changing anthropologist's life across continents for that of a writer-slash-waitress across a few months in Boston -- it also resonates. King's heroine betrays herself and others, often without fulling understanding why, but her journey is relatable. It's also fun because it's set in the 1990s. We were such a mess!
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
A book about what happens when you've done bad things, and then you're caught. The main character isn't exactly a villain, he isn't exactly an everyman, he doesn't entirely repent, and he certainly isn't much forgiven. And yet the story works much better than more straightforward, good-vs.-evil tracts. They should give this guy a Nobel prize! Oh, wait.
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Joe Rogan
I was on the Joe Rogan show. What?! Indeed. We discussed the fentanyl crisis and potential solutions, as well as everything from hip-hop to meditation. Great talk!
Conversations With Tyler
Tyler Cowen is an economics professor, but on his podcast Conversations With Tyler his dialogues — with people like Margaret Atwood, Malcolm Gladwell, and Michael Pollan — explore nearly everything under the sun. I was the first to talk to him about hip-hop, though! It was a dream come true to appear on the show, and he fired questions at me, one after another in quick succession, about fentanyl, the opioid crisis, dive bars, why OutKast doesn’t get back together, and whether or not Taylor Swift is overrated. He even demanded my pick for the greatest hip-hop album of all time. Great fun!
The Man Who Invented Fentanyl
Paul Janssen
This is an excerpt from Ben Westhoff’s book Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Created the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic about Paul Janssen, the Belgian chemist who created fentanyl.
In 1953, Paul Janssen founded his company, Janssen Pharmaceutica, initially working out of the third floor of his father’s building. “We didn’t even have a calculator, let alone a computer for the simplest calculations,” Janssen wrote in 2000. “To reduce expenditure we economized by performing simple tests on pieces of gut from newly slaughtered rabbits, which I collected early in the morning from a butcher.”
Despite its modest beginnings, the company hit the ground running with its discovery of a drug called ambucetamide, used to alleviate menstrual pain. Janssen would also invent loperamide (Imodium), for diarrhea, as well as chemicals that became critical to the fields of psychiatry, mycology, and parasitology. To spur his company’s ascent, he recruited star Belgian scientists from the Belgian Congo, after the political upheaval there that would lead to the country’s independence and the end of colonial rule. He was soon managing a large staff—its members called him Dr. Paul—but still closely involved with creating new chemicals. He literally daydreamed about molecules. “I often watched him at meetings,” wrote Sir James Black, a physiology and medicine Nobel laureate of King’s College London, “when bored with the proceedings, finding solace inside his head as he doodled new chemical compounds!”
One of these new chemicals was fentanyl, which Janssen and his team first synthesized in 1959 by experimenting with the chemical structure of an analgesic called pethidine (known as Demerol). He was hoping to find an alternative to morphine, the reigning pain reliever of its time. Janssen tested the effectiveness of fentanyl on lab mice, placing the mice on hot plates and slowly turning up the heat to gauge their reactions.
Fentanyl was particularly profitable for Janssen Pharmaceutica. Doctors found it superior to morphine because of the way it acted. Like morphine, it bound with a receptor in the brain (which we now call the “mu” receptor) to cause pain relief. But fentanyl came on faster, was much more powerful, and wasn’t as likely to cause nausea. “Fentanyl,” Janssen later wrote, “made it possible for the first time to perform lengthy operations and, together with its successors, heralded a revolution in the operating theatre. Without this compound and its analogue, sufentanil, open-heart surgery [as performed today] would not be possible.”
The drug was a revelation, and became increasingly popular for hospital use. Janssen Pharmaceutica was purchased by American behemoth Johnson & Johnson in 1961, and Paul Janssen continued working for the company, tasked with developing other types of fentanyl, referred to as analogues. But almost from the start, fentanyl’s potential addictive dangers were recognized, and it was placed under international control by a United Nations agreement in 1964, leading countries including the United States and the United Kingdom, in 1971, to schedule it—that is, to ban its recreational use. Indeed, its euphoric qualities would prove too much for many users to resist. “Fentanyl is a good medicine but a bad drug,” Justice Tettey, chief of the Laboratory and Scientific Section at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, summed up later. “It has excellent pain relieving properties, but is liable to abuse and can rapidly lead to dependency.”
Despite fentanyl’s quick success as a painkiller in Europe, during the 1960s it was almost blocked for sale in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration. One vocal opponent to the drug’s approval was University of Pennsylvania anesthesiology professor Robert Dripps. A rare outlier who believed fentanyl’s high potency could lead to abuse, he eventually agreed to a compromise after being lobbied by Paul Janssen himself: fentanyl would be available, but only when diluted with another drug called droperidol, a sedative—also patented by Janssen—that was believed to mitigate fentanyl’s detrimental effects. A ratio of fifty parts droperidol to one part fentanyl produced a “bad high” when taken recreationally, Dripps and Janssen agreed, and thus was unlikely to be abused. The FDA approved this combination in 1968.
Fentanyl went on to become the world’s most widely used anesthetic. Janssen died in 2003, years before fentanyl began killing more Americans annually than any drug in history.
This is an excerpt from Ben Westhoff’s book, Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Created the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic
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Fresh Air
This week I was on Fresh Air, speaking with Dave Davies about Fentanyl Inc. It was a highlight of this hectic, wonderful week of the book’s release, which included a reading at the St. Louis County Public Library, pictured above. Next week I’m in Washington D.C., New York, and Boston, and you can see all of my tour dates here.
Excerpt in The Atlantic
Today, The Atlantic published an excerpt from Fentanyl, Inc, entitled, “A Poison Factory in Plain Sight.” It’s about a Chinese chemical company called Yuancheng, pictured above, which operates out of a dilapidated hotel in the city of Wuhan. Employing hundreds of perky, recent college graduates as salespeople, it sells fentanyl precursors to Mexican cartels, American consumers, and anyone else who wants them. Fentanyl precursors are the main ingredients needed to make fentanyl, and are fueling the epidemic here in the United States; Yuancheng appears to sell more of them than any other company in the world. I’m very proud of this piece, and reporting it was quite an adventure. Yuancheng was one of two Chinese drug operations I infiltrated for Fentanyl, Inc. The book also describes my harrowing journey into a Shanghai lab, which synthesized fentanyl analogues and had Scarface-style mountains of drugs lying around.
Hearing Before Congressional Commission
Yesterday I testified on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. about fentanyl and China, before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a bipartisan, bicameral congressional-advisory commission. I spoke about my findings from Fentanyl, Inc., in particular that China is subsidizing the production and export of fentanyl and fentanyl-like drugs. You can read more information about the hearing here, and even watch it on C-SPAN. It was a bit nervewracking but also exciting, as it was the first time I’d revealed my findings publicly, that China offers tax rebates and other subsidies for the drugs that are fueling the opioid epidemic in the U.S. and elsewhere.
First review of Fentanyl, Inc.
The first Fentanyl, Inc. review has arrived, from Kirkus. It’s a starred review (!) and you can read the whole thing here. If this entices you, the book is now available on Amazon at a heavy discount.
“Compelling…Fascinating… [Westhoff] seamlessly blends past and present in his profiles of Belgian chemist Paul Janssen, who was responsible for fentanyl's initial development in 1959; police officers; politicians; LSD drug kingpins, and St. Louis street dealers. . . . Drawing material from official reports, drug databases, scores of interviews, and years of personal research, Westhoff presents an unflinching, illuminating portrait of a festering crisis involving a drug industry that thrives as effectively as it kills. Highly sobering, exemplary reportage delivered through richly detailed scenarios and diversified perspectives.”