The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth

by Sam Quinones

The pills sloshed across the country and onto street black markets,

Librarians found needles in the hedges outside their buildings.

Jim Rauh, who through the years visiting China had formed such kinship with the Chinese people, feels differently toward their government: “I see this as a chemical attack on the United States, with the Chinese government’s complicity. They’re pushing this material in what I consider to be the third Opium War, just this time by Chinese against us and other Western countries, and fentanyl is its weapon of mass destruction.”

The United States is the world’s leading per capita consumer of both opioids and sugar.