<story><title>Teen-age fentanyl deaths in a Texas county</title><url>https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/the-horrifying-epidemic-of-teen-age-fentanyl-deaths-in-a-texas-county</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ChancyChance</author><text>Notice how Barnett has zero empathy when he thought it was just an Austin thing, then did an about face after the subsequent deaths in Kyle.&lt;p&gt;However I still don’t understand the point of lacing drugs with fentanyl. As a drug dealer you make more money with living clients, right?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yetanotherloss</author><text>For the most part it&amp;#x27;s not intentionally lacing drugs, it&amp;#x27;s poor quality control and cross contamination.&lt;p&gt;No one is intentionally mixing fentanyl and MDMA or cocaine but with poor lab work it&amp;#x27;s easy to get a bit of the wrong whitish powder and the people selling it down stream have no more idea than their buyers what&amp;#x27;s really in it.&lt;p&gt;Affluent recreational drug connoisseurs can use basic chemistry and test kits to be highly confident what they&amp;#x27;re taking but even they get bit sometimes if reckless and using a new source.</text></comment>
<story><title>Teen-age fentanyl deaths in a Texas county</title><url>https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/the-horrifying-epidemic-of-teen-age-fentanyl-deaths-in-a-texas-county</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ChancyChance</author><text>Notice how Barnett has zero empathy when he thought it was just an Austin thing, then did an about face after the subsequent deaths in Kyle.&lt;p&gt;However I still don’t understand the point of lacing drugs with fentanyl. As a drug dealer you make more money with living clients, right?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>akiselev</author><text>Fentanyl costs on the order of $1,000 per kilogram to produce and that’s enough to cut hundreds of thousands of doses of another drug while making them significantly more addictive. It makes other drugs so profitable that the loss in customers is well worth it. There’s a future user born every minute, afterall.</text></comment>