Ben Westhoff > Quotes

“In recent years, some of the biggest new drug kingpins can't be successfully prosecuted. The Pablo Escobars of today are coming out of China, and they don't have to worry about being imprisoned by their government. They can operate free and in the clear, within the boundaries of their country's own laws. Whenever a deadly new drug is made illegal in China, manufacturers simply tweak its chemical structure and start producing a new drug that is still legal. Many fentanyl analogues and cannabinoids have been made this way.”
― Ben Westhoff, Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic

“The Chronic is sonically incredible, but it’s hard to drive around singing songs about, ‘Eazy-E can eat a big fat dick,’” Rock wrote on his website. “But I got a feeling I’ll be singing ‘Gin and Juice’ when I’m ninety.”
― Ben Westhoff, Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap

“Interstate 290 cuts past Chicago’s Rush University hospital and then through the city’s near Southwest Side. Adjacent to the expressway, homeless people and others suffering from opioid-use disorders do deals and shoot up, and the highway also provides quick access for affluent people from the suburbs. “They serve you in your car, quick-out in under a minute, and you’re back home in Hinsdale before the kids wake,” Jack Riley, ex–special agent in charge of the DEA’s Chicago office, told Rolling Stone. “That’s why gangsters kill for those corners. They’re the Park Place and Boardwalk of the drug game.” To Chicago residents, 290 is better known as the Eisenhower Expressway or, to many, the Heroin Highway. Chicago’s famously high murder rate, which police say is driven by drug dealing on the West Side, all comes to a head near the Heroin Highway, in drug markets on streets like Independence Boulevard.”
― Ben Westhoff, Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic

“Dr. Dre, the famous rapper and producer. While digging through the LA County court archives, I learned that in the 1980s he assaulted the mother of three of his children, Lisa Johnson, numerous times, including while she was pregnant.”
― Ben Westhoff, Little Brother: Love, Tragedy, and My Search for the Truth

“The heavens are high, and the emperor is far away.”
― Ben Westhoff, Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic

“Companies selling medicines on American shelves aren’t required to list the manufacturers of their drugs’ active ingredients on their packaging.”
― Ben Westhoff, Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic