The Weirding of the Drug Supply

What is BTMPS, and why is it found with fentanyl?

A new chemical has entered the street drug supply and is found often with fentanyl in parts of the country.

BTMPS is not a drug with psychoactive effects on the human brain. It’s an industrial chemical. It’s used to protect plastic from degrading due to ultraviolet light.

BTMPS, by the way, is short for this behemoth:

Bis[2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-4-piperidyl]sebacate.

There are no studies of the effects of BTMPS on humans – why would there be? No one ever imagined a human consuming it. Again, according to a dispatch from UCLA, “it has not been commonly understood as a `drug.’”

Not surprisingly, animal studies show it can be highly dangerous to living organisms, creating everything from eye damage to sudden death. Worth mentioning, however, that it’s also been tested on rats as a way of diminishing nicotine use, and in reducing morphine cravings and withdrawal symptoms.

One study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), found the chemical in a third of 284 drug samples suspected to contain fentanyl taken from nine drug-checking centers in Los Angeles and Philadelphia last summer and fall.

“The amount of BTMPS in available samples typically exceeded the amount of fentanyl, sometimes by orders of magnitude,” the JAMA authors wrote.

This, they went on to say, “may indicate a change in synthesis methods, possibly to stabilize a precursor [to making fentanyl] such as 4-ANPP, which is susceptible to thermal and oxidative degradation. BTMPS also might have been added for dilution.”

[NOTE: A few weeks after I posted this, the Center for Forensic Science Research and Education reported: “BTMPS has been detected in all regions across the United States, demonstrating vast prevalence. BTMPS has appeared in more than 600 drug materials tested by our laboratory.” At first researchers found the presence of BTMPS “perplexing.” However, more recent research and analysis leads them to believe that BTMPS is being used to develop precursor chemicals in the manufacture of fentanyl, the center reported.]

Another study in the state of Washington last quarter found BTMPS in 80 drug samples with fentanyl. Traces of the chemical have been found in drug samples in Maryland, Delaware, Nevada, and Puerto Rico.

A New York state study found BTMPS in 22 percent of the samples tested.

DEA agents I’ve spoken with suggest BTMPS may be part of an attempt by Mexican traffickers groping to find a way of making or mimicking fentanyl without relying on chemicals from China. Achieving fentanyl independence, in other words.

That’s only a hunch, they stress.

As the JAMA study authors note: “Ultimately, the reason for the introduction of BTMPS in fentanyl is unknown.”

All this feels surreal — like what’s next?

But as I’ve written before, traffickers understand that the future of illicit drugs in this country, and likely worldwide, is in synthetics – drugs made only with chemicals.

That’s likely true for two reasons, at least. Synthetic drugs don’t need land, irrigation, sunlight, farmers, etc. They require a smaller supply chain, which increases profit and lowers risk. Also, the chemistry literature is vast and filled with drugs that companies invented then shelved as commercially unworkable, but which traffickers can now, with the right people, mine for new products.

This is because, as I argue in The Least of Us, synthetic drugs are mostly about what benefits traffickers in increased profit and reduced risk. They have little to do with what drug users might be demanding — hence chemicals like BTMPS.

[After publishing this post, this report on nitazene drugs, a family of synthetic opioids invented decades ago and which I wrote about in The Least of Us, appeared.]

On the contrary, the attitude among traffickers is, from a conversation with one, the drugs they provide will create their own demand once they’re introduced.

None of this answers why an industrial chemical like BTMPS has shown up in drug supplies, but it feels reasonable to assume that this kind of thing will continue.

Which is one more reason why the era of “risk-free” recreational drug use is emphatically over.

Indeed, headlines from the illicit drug world likely have something to do with why adolescent drug use has dropped and stayed low in recent years. (See this Dreamland podcast.)

One Washington state study noted:

“BTMPS is not the only impurity that may be found in the drug supply about which little is known, and not even the only light stabilizer normally used in manufacturing (for example, we have also seen 2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-4-piperidinol). But given the presence and prominence of BTMPS, we focus on this one impurity here.”

Another question worth an answer: What role does Philadelphia play in introducing new drugs to the supply, and why?

The animal sedative known as xylazine (developed by Bayer in 1962), showed up on the streets first and with devastating consequences in Philadelphia, combined almost always with fentanyl, before it appeared in the drug supply elsewhere in the country.

Perhaps the city is being used by one or more groups as a test market.

It’s also worth noting that all these substances always seem to accompany fentanyl. It’s as if some group is experimenting with “innovating” in and around their goldmine -- the way any corporation does with a flagship consumer product.

Fodder for future posts, to be sure.

---