How Fentanyl Ruined The Drug Game
Fentanyl officially ruined the drug game, at least here in Philadelphia. Back in the day, roughly around the late 1980’s through the early 2000’s, you simply got what you paid for as far as illegal street drugs were concerned. You spent $20 on a bag of cocaine and you got $20 worth of cocaine. Nowadays your more likely to get either fentanyl-laced cocaine, or a bag containing “unknown substances” regardless of what strip or corner you cop from.
I stopped using hard drugs back when the drugs on the street were real, not the garbage they’re selling today. For some reason the people who run shit on the street are okay with this business model because they are getting richer by the minute selling this bullshit. The “business model” makes no sense to me at all. Why would you sell a product that 1- kills your customer base, and 2- draws an unimaginable amount of heat on not only yourself & your corner, but the entire surrounding area in which you work.
Back In The Day
Back in the 90’s through the early 2000’s I had a heroin habit, a very bad heroin habit. Once I could no longer afford my drugs with simply working a regular job I began to sell heroin on one of the countless corners in the Badlands. Luckily for me, I was able to work a spot that had primo material- the quality stayed consistent, the bags were big, and the corner stayed open 24 hours a day. That’s when I really got to see the scope of how many people actually did heroin & smoked crack. We would bring out a “rack” (10 bundles/140 $10 bags) every 15-30 minutes and burn through it fast as hell. Sometimes the 10 racks wouldn’t be enough to serve all the customers waiting to cop. The key to that “successful” corner was, as I mentioned earlier, consistency and quality. The customers knew what they were buying was real, potent, and available 24 hours a day. Nowadays the drug game has been completely flipped on its head due to fentanyl.
Back then we sold what was referred to as “#4 heroin“, which meant is was pure enough to be smoked, injected, snorted, eaten, etc. It was a finely-ground tan/off-white powder that immediately dissolved in water. Nowadays, the fentanyl comes in all kinds of ways- powder, liquid, and/or pills. The problem with the fentanyl is the “mechanics” as we used to refer to them (the people who cut the heroin & packaged the bundles to put out on the street), have no idea how much is too much per dose, resulting in countless overdoses and deaths. Fentanyl, when used correctly in the hospital, is given to each individual according to body weight. These people bagging up the fetty are just dumping it out on a plate, adding the cut, mixing it up and bagging the final product. There is no way to know how strong, or weak, each bag is, let alone each batch of material. This presents a problem for the end user(s).
Low Prices Attract Everyone
Another major problem, as I see it at least, is the extremely high potency of fentanyl coupled with the cheap-as-hell wholesale prices. Before, besides having to know (and trust) your connect for the dope, you needed some serious money to buy your own material, pay rent to whoever owned the corner you were working, pay the case-workers, dealers and lookouts, and if you really had it poppin’ like that, money to pay the coppers to keep out of the immediate area you were operating in. Nowadays anybody with a couple hundred bucks can buy some fentanyl on the darknet, buy some empty bags, and walk up and down the strip slingin’ work. And these people, who look at the customers as junkies and dope fiends, simply do not care what they cut the fentanyl with as long as they can make some sales.
Yet another problem users face today is regardless of what you attempt to purchase on the street, you are more than likely going to receive fentanyl. I know guys that were in a halfway house that never touched Percoset, heroin, any type of opiates ever in their lives that bought a $20 jar of weed off the street, smoked it, then failed a urinalysis from their parole officers that showed positive for fentanyl. It’s in everything. It’s in the cocaine, the marijuana, the PCP, and especially the pills. The most popular way the fentanyl is sold nowadays is either in $5.00 bags that are also known as “tranq” (Xylazine, an animal tranquilizer that eats away the users’ flesh) and in pill form, mainly Xanax and Percoset. Like I said before, there’s no way of measuring the dose per pill or bag, which results in overdose or death for the user.
The Game Ain’t the Same
The way that fentanyl has destroyed the drug game, in my opinion, is all the extra heat it’s brought to the streets. Back in the day before there was an “opioid crisis” or whatever they call it now to dress it up for the mainstream media, it was business as usual. Stand on the corner, sell the work, get paid. Every once in a while some new material would come out and it would be made a little bit stronger than usual to make a few people fall out. The word would spread to all the users and that corner would pop like the Fourth of July. Within a day or two the potency would be cut down so the material could be stretched for maximum profits. Now it’s just super-strong fentanyl, or carfentanyl, dropping bodies on a daily basis. The entire area of Kensington, Philadelphia looks like something from an “end of times” movie.
One thing’s for sure and two things for certain- there is probably no coming back from this “opioid crisis” or pandemic or whatever it’s called right now. The days of literally making trash bags filled with money is over & done with unless your the cartels that are bringing it in or the Chinese manufacturers selling it by the ton to the cartels. Going back to the actual ingredients put in these mixtures, I don’t understand the concept behind adding whatever you have laying around to a lethal medication and possibly killing off your customer base. When I used to hustle we took pride in having “real” drugs, having the best quality material, fucked-up as it may sound, but it kept the bodies from piling up and more importantly, it kept the Strike Force and DEA out of the area. When them alphabet boys come to town best believe they have a serious game plan and it’s guaranteed that dozens of people are going to prison.
Another problem with this whole situation is the amount of time the state & feds are giving away for selling fentanyl. The average minimum sentence is 97 months for trafficking in fentanyl according to the “Quick Facts On Federal Fentanyl Trafficking Offenses” PDF (available here). That’s 8 years & 1 month *minimum* fed time. If you have a pistol when you get booked forget about it, your cooked. If it’s a second or third felony drug offense your more than likely to get a sentence “from now on” meaning life.
Too Many People Are Employed By the Misery
Now I know for a fact that-at least here in Philly- if the powers-that-be want to clean up the streets they can do it. They did it before with Operation Safe Streets and Operation Sunrise, in which city officials had police cars parked on every single drug corner in the entire city 24 hours a day for three months. When I say you couldn’t find anything anywhere that would be an understatement. They literally shut down all open-air drug sales inside Philadelphia. Cop cars on every corner, mobile crime labs on the worst of the worst corners and cops patrolling neighborhoods on foot. They even had alot of streets in some neighborhoods blocked off and you had to show ID to get down the street. So it is possible to shut shit down completely if they really want to. The problem is, too much money is made off of policing, arrests, housing prisoners, rehabilitation, case workers, probation & parole officers for them to ever consider stopping anything. 1/4 of the city would be unemployed if they did so.
And we can’t forget about the most important people of all- the customers. Without the customers there would be no game. No game, no money, so why would you literally sell them a product that not only kills them, but eats away their flesh from the inside out. I’d post an image but I’m actually tired of seeing peoples’ muscle tissue and bare bones peeking through giant holes in their flesh. I understand the economics of the whole Xylazine/Tranq thing, but in the long run the business will suffer. You need the customers to buy your product(s) so why not keep them happy & keep them coming back? If you thin the herd with material that is too strong and alot of the customers disappear, the violence for the money the remaining customers spend is going to be alot worse than it is already. Less people coppin’ less money to take home.
Well that about sums up my rant. Maybe there’s something wrong with the way I think. Maybe, for some people, everything is lovely, but I know for damn-sure the drug game as I knew it growing up is nowhere near what it used to be. We stood behind out product, made sure it was authentic, and we never let anybody bother the customers. Nowadays they dealers are killing them off slowly but surely. I can’t figure this one out folks. Also, I apologize if I was all over the place but there’s so much information it’s hard to stay on track without sliding off onto another topic. I tried to keep that at a minimum.
Also, by no means am I trying to glorify selling drugs. Most of the money I did make went on drugs & partying, lawyers, bail money and commissary. While I thought I was having fun at the time, I understand now that I single-handedly fucked up my life due to felony convictions & prison time, and causing tremendous pain & suffering for my family as well as myself. If I could suggest anything to anybody it would be to not even try that shit (fentanyl/heroin) once. That’s all it takes and the nightmare that follows will be worse than you can imagine. My last 2 cents would be this- get yourself a medical marijuana card, a fine-ass female and fall back. Weed never killed anybody.
DEA: Facts About Fentanyl
DEA: Widespread Threat Of Xylazine/Fentanyl Mixture
DEA: One Pill Can Kill
Opioid Treatment & Help
