Fentanyl has become a relatively cheap way of upping the strength of whatever opiate you're selling. It used to be that no one knew how to illegally make fentanyl. Those dogs are long gone.
But there's another aspect to this: if someone overdoses (even dies) from something you as a drug dealer have sold then (as dark as it sounds) that's actually good marketing. That means you have the good stuff. It's shown to increase demand.
The moral of the story is don't get addicted to opiates.
"National data show that a relatively low percentage of the cocaine tested by law enforcement contains fentanyl, although the mixture has become more common. Less than 1% of the cocaine samples tested by the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2016 contained synthetic opioids, according to figures provided to NPR; in 2020, it was up to 3.3%."
3.3% is a lot higher than I expected, though I wonder if there is a selection bias going on there.
That's not how addiction works.
As an aside, the US has a cultural problem with painkillers it seems. Like the expectation seems to be that painkillers completely remove pain but that's not how it works. Or at least if it does you're overusing painkillers. Painkillers are largely to make pain bearable and manageable not remove it completely.
This attitude seems to be a factor in the overprescription of opiates. I think I read once that if you're still taking painkillers 2 weeks after whatever incident led you to be taking them, there's a 50% chance you'll be taking them in a year.
I've had knee surgery and basically just got given oxycodone and valium. I took them for 2 days and then just used Tylenol (you don't take ibuprofen after surgery apparently).
That's really what I mean by "don't get addicted to opiates". Treat them as dangerous because they are.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine.
^ Imagine needing more and more of that stuff to get your usual high. You’re dead.