The picture below is of a few paragraphs from the book The Economics of Public Issues, which I often used as a supplemental textbook when I was teaching.
Now for modern day Mexico. See How Mexican Cartels Test Fentanyl on Vulnerable People and Animals: A global crackdown on fentanyl has led cartels to innovate production methods and test their risky formulas on people, as well as rabbits and chickens by Natalie Kitroeff and Paulina Villegas of The NY Times. Excerpts:
"Global efforts to crack down on the synthetic opioid have made it harder for these criminal groups to find the chemical compounds they need to produce the drug. The original source, China, has restricted exports of the necessary raw ingredients, pushing the cartels to come up with new and extremely risky ways to maintain fentanyl production and potency.
The experimentation, members of the cartels say, involves combining the drug with a wider range of additives — including animal sedatives and other dangerous anesthetics. To test their results, the criminals who make the fentanyl for the cartels, often called cooks, say they inject their experimental mixtures into human subjects as well as rabbits and chickens."
"One cook said he recently started mixing fentanyl with an anesthetic often used in oral surgery. Another said the best additive he had found was a sedative for dogs and cats.
Another cook demonstrated for Times reporters how to produce fentanyl in a cartel safe house in Sinaloa State, in northwest Mexico. He said that if the batch was too weak, he added xylazine, an animal tranquilizer known on the street as “Tranq” — a combination that American officials warn can be deadly."
"The cooks’ accounts align with data from the Mexican government showing a rise in the use of fentanyl mixed with xylazine and other substances, especially in cities near the U.S. border.
“The illicit market gets much more benefit from its substances by cutting them with different things such as xylazine,” said Alexiz Bojorge Estrada, deputy director of Mexico’s mental health and addiction commission.
“You enhance it and therefore need less product,” said Ms. Bojorge, referring to fentanyl, “and you get more profit.”
U.S. drug researchers have also noticed a rise in what one called “weirder and messier” fentanyl. Having tested hundreds of samples in the United States, they found an increase in the variety of chemical compounds in fentanyl on the streets."drug
Then see Bootleg alcohol claims lives of at least 30 people in Istanbul while dozens are hospitalized from The Associated Press. Excerpts:
"At least 30 people have died in Istanbul over the past three days after drinking bootleg alcohol, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported Thursday, as authorities intensified a crackdown on counterfeit drinks."
"Deaths from counterfeit alcohol has become increasingly frequent in Turkey, where the prices of alcoholic beverages continue to rise. Many people, confronted with ever-increasing costs, resort to cheaper alternatives or homemade spirits, increasing the risk of poisoning from toxic substances.
A combination of soaring inflation and government taxes has driven beverage prices to all-time highs."
Related posts:
How is Iran in the 2020s like the USA in the 1920s? (2023)
Even the people dealing the drugs don’t know what’s in them in most instances (2023)
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