Fentanyl’s greatest advantage to dealers was its potency. Very little of the drug was enough to get people high. That, in turn, made it easy to smuggle. Fentanyl’s potency was also its drawback. If minute amounts of the drug could get you high, even a tiny bit more could kill you—the equivalent of a few grains of salt. To be handled and sold to users, it had to be mixed with larger quantities of other powders, each white like fentanyl. Indeed, never before had the drug underworld seen its profit, and so much profit at that, tied to the delicate task of mixing powders, particularly one as
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