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

by Sam Quinones

But Sundell told me that the dealers she knew quickly saw that with fentanyl they could create opioid addicts who would buy daily, instead of occasionally, as many cocaine users do. Once one dealer did it, they all did it. “They do it because fentanyl is so addictive,” she said. “They do it just enough for you to be become addicted. You’re not addicted to coke, you’re addicted to the fentanyl—but you think it’s coke. I don’t think [the customers] knew that it was mixed.” In the summer of 2016, Akron’s street drugs changed again. Over the Fourth of July weekend, a cluster of deaths broke out due to carfentanil—the rhinoceros anesthetic, many times more potent than fentanyl. It’s hard to know its origin, as well. But in Akron, a long-time drug dealer named Donte Gibson began ordering fentanyl and carfentanil mailed to him from China. By May 2016, according to court records, Gibson was selling the synthetic drugs across Akron and other nearby towns. Over the next two years, Gibson made enough from dealing this new product that his wife tallied almost $700,000 in bills at Saks Fifth Avenue. The couple added an in-ground swimming pool to their south Akron home. Carfentanil killed 130 Summit County residents that year.