Fentanyl is much cheaper than heroin, and produces a stronger high. Dealers would still be pushing fentanyl even with a ready supply of heroin.

But they arent in Europe, which has a plentiful synthetic drug pipeline.

So the question is why?

I argue it’s because heroin is so plentiful there is no need and if you try and sell fentanyl people will stop buying from you.

I would argue it's also the users. PCP never got big, gashits are not very popular in most of Europe, GHB never got that big either.

Essentially unsafe drugs aren't popular. Available but not mainstream.

Here in Switzerland they get clean heroin from the state, not surprised fentanyl is still a niche phenomenon.

How can it be the users when you cant tell what drug is in that tablet of knock-off “Xanax” you bought?

Why are they buying knock-off Xanax from a unreputable source in the first place?

Darknet works like Amazon, but unlike Amazon reviews are usually real. Bad actors get blamed.

If they do, and there is a known risk, why did nobody in the distribution chain use a $15 test kit to verify the quality? Someone must have bought a few hundred pills at once to redistribute them, $15 and 5 minutes wouldn't matter.

Or general save drug use. You have a pill you haven't tried yet. No way to check properly. So you only take a bit and see if it turns out as expected.

This fentanyl thing is new and wasn't a thing when I popped pills. However there have always been dangerous pills. We've checked them, online, at labs, in person and small doses. If they were shit we throw them.

I believe the main difference is culture. We were aware of the dangers, we had mobile labs at parties and flyers about the current bad pills.

(Other than that Xanax and prescription drugs are nowhere as popular in Europe than they appear in the US)

Fentanyl is one of many possibles, and the test strips themselves may be bunk. The odds a 13 year old without a car is dropping off their pills at the gas chromatography machine in their STEM magnet school in the morning is pretty much nill.

Also worth noting in my state possessing kits design for testing for illegal drugs is a felony. [note: not legal advice]. No one reputable is going to risk a felony to sell drug testing kits for shitty margins.

https://www.azleg.gov/viewDocument/?docName=http://www.azleg...

See that's exactly my point. If these kits aren't even legal there simply is no drug safety culture to even build on.

Because, in the Netherlands you can get your 'illegal' drugs tested anonymously for safety for free (or a really small fee like 2,5 euro in high traffic places like Amsterdam).

You can do it in the US as well. You can buy fentanyl test strips easily.

https://dancesafe.org/drug-checking/

That said, how many users actually test every single drug they purchase? Especially if they are addicted and using multiple times per day?