‘The deadliest drug we’ve ever known’: author Sam Quinones on how fentanyl saturated the US

For the last nine years, Sam Quinones has been studying the changing face of drug use, sales, and addiction in the United States.

In his new book The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth, he tracks the explosion of synthetic drugs that has hit the streets of America, increasing the danger of drug use and making addictive chemical substances far cheaper and more plentiful than ever before.

He finds that the days when drug production required land and agriculture are gone. Now drugs are being manufactured from toxic chemicals in vast quantities by Mexican traffickers and introduced to users by slipping them into the supply of other substances, like heroin and cocaine.

The Guardian spoke with Quinones about the origins and dangers of synthetic drugs and his theories about the intersection between drug use and homelessness. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

In your 2015 book, Dreamland, you explored how the opioid addiction crisis took hold in the small towns of America, through pain pills marketed by drug companies and over-prescribed by doctors. How have opioids changed since then?

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