What? Public health-oriented drug enforcement? Who would do such a thing? \s

Surprisingly common in the Netherlands.

I'm asking half-seriously here: assuming the fentanyl pill guy could demonstrate Good Manufacturing Practice, i.e. dose constant and as advertised and equally distributed throughout the pill, would he be sentenced more leniently?

At least in the US, it's almost certainly not written into the law or sentencing guidelines, so any leniency based on improved safety would have to be at the sole discretion of the judge.

I think it's commonly used to cut other drugs (coke), so I don't think that argument would go far.

I'd be very surprised if the fentanyl (or its analogues) in cocaine is deliberate (unless the goal is to harm users, which seems unlikely) - they are very different drugs. It's used more to be passed off as other opiates, because it's much cheaper and its potency makes it much easier to smuggle (carfentanyl being approximate 5000 times more potent than heroin). I'd suspect that the fentanyl in cocaine is coming from cross-contamination - lethal doses of carfentanyl are measured in micrograms, so anything less than perfect cleaning of equipment used to process both drugs could result in a fatality.

There's press reports about the DEA warning about it. E.g.: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/florida/fl-reg-cocaine-cut-...

That's what I remembered.

I'm sure it has happened at least once, but I suspect that the DEA gives it press coverage way out of proportion to its incidence.

As an adolescent of 12 or so, I remember watching a D.A.R.E. video in school where the fictional character tried marijuana for the first time, but it was secretly laced with cocaine and the fictional character had some kind of unspecified heart condition and hyper-sensitivity to cocaine that caused his first puff of pot to kill him. Remember kids, your first puff of pot can kill you!

They also told us that sometimes PCP is laced with rat poison.

Even as a 12 year-old, the implied frequency of such craziness beggared belief. It would have been more believable if they would have warned us that we shouldn't try hard liquor because it might be tainted with methanol. That at least happens with some frequency back in the Old Country, according to a Bulgarian friend.

Mixing cocaine and heroin is not all that uncommon. Sounds like a variant of a speedball:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedball_(drug)

Sure, there are certainly users who will mix the drugs, but mixing the two and then selling it as just cocaine seems strange. Supplying strong opiates to the (potentially) opiate-naive without their knowledge seems to be an unnecessary risk, and it is probably bad for business as you aren't supplying the experience that a cocaine user may be looking for.

It is very uncommon.

But surely the market for Fentanyl "[took] place anyway but on a different market"? It's such a short sighted move in an otherwise well played plan.

Maybe not. No one wants fentanyl: they want diacetylmorphine, and will take fentanyl if they can't find morphine. Opiates are all the same.

Did you meant _aren't _ all the same? They're certainly similar, and fentanyl will satisfy the cravings of those addicted to other opiates, but compared to heroin/diacetylmorphine has a shorter duration of action and reportedly less euphoric/more sedative effects.