Fentanyl – threat to Europe?

Journalist Szymon Opryszek goes to Mexico and learns that cooking fentanyl is easier than cooking a good broth. His guide is Chucho, a cocinero that prepares the drug using the “one-pot method”. This is where a four-part of reporters’ investigation starts, in which Szymon Opryszek tries to answer the question: is Europe under threat of a fentanyl crisis?

In the second part, Opryszek dissects and analyses the Mexican narcoculture, including the “narcocorridos” – a genre of popular Mexican music glorifying the life of a drug trafficker. The third part shifts focus to look for the producers of supplies used to cook fentanyl – that is the Chinese pharmaceutical companies. In the last part of the investigation, the action moves to Afghanistan poppy fields and finally to Europe.

In the articles, Opryszek talks to drug producers and drug traffickers; to sales reps’ of pharmaceutical companies; to Afghan farmers and to public health experts. The scope of investigation shows the ways in which fentanyl can access European markets and what are the odds of opioid crisis happening on the Old Continent.