7B
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2016
DEA chemists race to identify synthetic opioids
By ERIKA KINETZ
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Emily
Dye walked down the echoing
white hallway and into a dim
room known as “the vault.”
The evidence was wrapped in
plastic. She checked it out and
placed it into a steel lockbox.
New drugs were appearing
every other week in the Drug
Enforcement Administration’s
Special Testing and Research
Laboratory, an unmarked gray
building in northern Virginia.
Dye, a 27-year-old DEA
chemist, knew her sample
could be one of them.
“Man,” she said. “I’ve got
to figure out what this is.”
The proliferation of rap-
idly evolving synthetic opi-
oids has become so fierce that
the DEA says they now con-
stitute an entire new class of
drugs, which are fueling the
deadliest addiction crisis the
United States has ever seen.
The fentanyl-like drugs
are pouring in primarily from
China, U.S. officials say — an
assertion Beijing maintains
has not been substantiated .
Laws cannot keep pace with
the speed of scientific innova-
tion. As soon as one substance
is banned, chemists synthesize
slightly different, and techni-
cally legal, molecules and sell
that substance online, delivery
to U.S. doorstops guaranteed .
Easy to buy
Today, it is almost as easy
to order an ever-shifting array
of synthetic opioids online
from China as it is to buy a
pair of shoes.
“Right now we’re seeing
the emergence of a new class,
that’s fentanyl-type opioids,”
Dye’s boss, Jill Head, said.
“Based on the structure, there
can be many, many more sub-
stitutions on that molecule
that we have not yet seen.”
Entrepreneurial chemists
have been creating designer
alternatives to cannabis,
amphetamine, cocaine and
Ecstasy for years. But the new
synthetics are far more lethal
; in some cases, an amount
smaller than a poppy seed can
kill.
Dye has recommitted to
every safety protocol she
was ever taught. One, safety
glasses. Two, lab coat, but-
toned. Three, powder-free dis-
posable nitrile gloves. Four,
face mask. She placed an
emergency naloxone injection
kit — an antidote for opioid
overdose — on her lab bench.
Just in case.
Then she unwrapped the
evidence and pulled out a
palm-sized baggie.
AP Photos/Cliff Owen
LEFT: Forensic chemist Emily Dye talks about protective measures she takes while handling evidence containing fentanyl at the Drug Enforcement
Administration Special Testing and Research Laboratory in Sterling, Va. A novel class of deadly drugs is exploding across the country, with many
manufactured in China for export around the world. The drugs, synthetic opioids, are fueling the deadliest addiction crisis the U.S. has ever seen.
RIGHT: A vial containing 2mg of fentanyl, which will kill a human if ingested into the body, is displayed at the Drug Enforcement Administration Spe-
cial Testing and Research Laboratory in Sterling, Va.
She scooped up a dot of
powder and gingerly placed it
in a small vial. As she worked,
she treated the material as if it
were radioactive.
After transferring a few
drops of methanol into the
vial, she clamped it shut and
dropped it into a mass spec-
trometer. The machine sucked
the evidence through a cop-
per-colored wire and bom-
barded it with electrons to
break it into small pieces.
“Kind of like when you drop
a puzzle,” Dye said.
The resulting pattern of
peaks is akin to a chemical
fingerprint. Dye compared the
result with the lab’s library of
approximately 1,500 known
drugs.
None matched. This was
something new.
She and her colleagues
ran the evidence through a
nuclear magnetic resonance
spectrometer to map the posi-
tion of different atoms. Then
they guessed. They bought
a sample of the compound
they thought they had from a
legitimate research chemical
company.
On July 26, Dye ran that
reference standard through
the mass spectrometer. The
result matched the evidence
exactly.
“It’s
4-fluoroisobutyr-
ylfentanyl,” Dye said.
Chinese vendors
Long before Dye made her
discovery, Chinese vendors
were offering 4-fluoroisobu-
tyrylfentanyl — 4-FIBF for
short — for sale.
Shanghai
Xianchong
Chemical Co., a trading com-
pany with a spare office in
central Shanghai, was one of
them. Shanghai Xianchong
started fielding requests for
4-FIBF around April, said
manager Jammi Gao, a clean-
cut man in a white polo shirt.
Gao said in an email he
could sell 4-FIBF for $6,000
a kilogram, though later he
denied ever brokering a deal.
He refused to ship illegal
drugs, but 4-FIBF is so new to
the street it is not a controlled
substance in either the U.S. or
China.
Back in the lab, Dye peeled
off her gloves. She didn’t know
users were warning each other
not to overdose chasing a her-
oin high that never kicked in
with 4-FIBF. She didn’t know
about the dosing schedules
addicts had already worked
out. And she didn’t know that
4-FIBF gave some people satis-
fying, sleep-through-the-night
results when inserted up their
rectum.
Dye would go home, safe,
to her dog. Maybe tomorrow
she would find the next new
thing in an evidence bag on
her bench. But elsewhere, all
across America, people would
not make it through the night.
By the time Dye finished
work the next day, another 90
Americans would be dead of
opioid overdoses.
AP Photo/Cliff Owen
A vial containing 2mg of fentanyl, which will kill a human if
ingested into the body, is displayed at the Drug Enforcement
Administration Special Testing and Research Laboratory.
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