Fentanyl crisis is being driven by ample supply: Quinones

(NewsNation) — Sam Quinones, a veteran journalist and author who’s written books about America’s fight against opioids, is warning that the fentanyl crisis is being driven by an ample supply, not demand.

“Pharmaceutical companies really understood that if you badger doctors relentlessly to prescribe the drugs, opioids themselves will create demand,” Quinones said during a Wednesday appearance on “Elizabeth Vargas Reports.” “Opioids have this very, very powerful effect, unlike any other family of drugs, on our brain pathways. And this creates the demand from supply.”

It’s a business model started by pharmaceutical companies, which the cartels are now following precisely, according to Quinones.

In 2023, the fentanyl overdose death rate peaked at 112,000 for the first time. And Quinones says that anyone who sells fentanyl, legally or illegally, “understands this basic fact” that opioids create their own demand.

Quinones recently wrote in a Washington Post editorial that “Dealers know that if customers don’t immediately die, they’ll be fervent, daily buyers — for a while. Thus dealers seem unchastened when customers overdose: Dead addicts will be replaced soon enough.”

It’s why there are no long-term fentanyl users because, as Quinones puts it, “if they remain on the street, they die.”

Quinones is author of four books, including “The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth.”