In "Mexico: Traffickers embrace fentanyl"

LAT:

Last year, more than 31,000 people in the United States died after taking fentanyl or one of its close chemical relatives, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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fentanyl and other so-called synthetics are cooked from chemicals in makeshift laboratories in a matter of hours.

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The original fentanyl cook was a Belgian chemist and pharmaceutical developer named Paul Janssen, who was looking for a painkiller more powerful than morphine when he synthesized fentanyl for the first time in 1960.

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It costs $32,000 to produce one kilogram of fentanyl, according to a task force of U.S. law enforcement agencies known as the Fentanyl Working Group. That 2.2 pounds can be used to manufacture one million pills with a street value of $20 million.

*Previously: "Opioid Dealers Embrace the Dark Web to Send Deadly Drugs by Mail"