DRUG CARTELS DRUM : ' FENTANYL ' PRECIS

 

CULIACAN - MEXICO : '' If there weren't all those people in the United States, looking to get high, we wouldn't sell anything,'' the boss said. '' It's their fault, not ours. We just take advantage of the situation.''

Two pet store employees in Sinaloa, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from cartel members, confirmed that the cheapest rabbits are known to be purchased for drug testing.

The boss's other test subjects are hens from a nearby ranch. Every time he injected the hens with Fentanyl, the boss said they would die, fall over or stumble around as if they were drunk.  All the locals knew not to eat the chickens or the eggs from the ranch.

But recently, the animals stopped having strong reaction to the drug, the boss said, even though his process hadn't changed.

His employees were logging the same hours at the same modest lab in the mountains, starting at 5 a.m. and sleeping there for days on end. They were working with the same equipment -laboratory shakers, trays, large containers and a blender to mix up the final product.

The boss said he had eventually concluded that the culprit was '' a very diluted supply of the chemical ingredients from China. The result was a bunk product. '' It's too weak,'' he said.

To fix the problem, the boss first tried combining fentanyl with ketamine, a short-acting anesthetic, but he said users didn't like the bitter taste that came with smoking the mix.

It worked much better to add procaine, he said, a local anesthetic often used to numb parts of a patient's mouth during a dental procedure.

When asked whether he felt guilty about producing a drug that causes mass death, the boss said all he was doing was giving his customers what they wanted.

'' If there weren't all those people in the United States looking to get high, we wouldn't sell anything,'' he said. '' It's their fault, not ours. We just take advantage of the situation.''

The World Students Society thanks Natalie Kitroeff and Paulina Villegas.