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Ben Westhoff

Biography

Ben Westhoff

Ben Westhoff is an award-winning investigative reporter who writes about culture, drugs and poverty, and has advised officials at the top levels of government about the fentanyl epidemic. His previous book ORIGINAL GANGSTAS is the definitive work about West Coast hip-hop. He came up in the alternative weeklies Riverfront Times and L.A. Weekly and has also written for the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, the Guardian and Vice.

Ben Westhoff

Books by Ben Westhoff

Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic
by Ben Westhoff - Current Affairs, Health, Nonfiction, Social Sciences

A deeply human story, FENTANYL, INC. is the first deep-dive investigation of a hazardous and illicit industry that has created a worldwide epidemic, ravaging communities and overwhelming and confounding government agencies that are challenged to combat it. Drugs like fentanyl, K2 and Spice --- and those with arcane acronyms like 25i-NBOMe --- were all originally conceived in legitimate laboratories for proper scientific and medicinal purposes. Their formulas were then hijacked and manufactured by rogue chemists, largely in China, who change their molecular structures to stay ahead of the law, making the drugs’ effects impossible to predict. Ben Westhoff has infiltrated this shadowy world.