[hermes8329]

It's used in all sorts of surgical procedures. I've had it a few times, used as a relatively minor painkiller under those circumstances. Which sounds crazy considering how much news is about how strong it is. But it works well in those controlled circumstances

[Tuna-Fish]

Fentanyl that you get in an OR and the "fentanyl" on the streets are actually two different chemicals.

The street drug "fentanyl" is actually carfentanil, which is about 100 times more potent that fentanyl (or about 5000 times more potent than heroin). It is favored by criminals because when it's highly concentrated, you can fit ~the same amount of doses in a suitcase that with heroin would take a 20ft container. That suitcase, when bought from a legitimate Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturer, will also cost very little. Then if you can smuggle it into the states, you can run a billion-dollar drug empire from it, and never have to smuggle in anything again.

This is why all supply-side measures against opiates are never going to work again. There are already enough of them in the hands of criminals in the US to cover the demand for decades, if not centuries. It's also why "fentanyl" on the street is so deadly. When the active ingredient is so potent and arrives concentrated, if the dilution process is even a little uneven, a single dose can easily be accidentally a 100 times more potent than you expect it to be.

Even if you use other drugs, never use street fentanyl for any reason.

[aaronmdjones]

You would have been given micrograms of Fentanyl. Certainly not a milligram, and certainly not 2mg, which will probably kill you. For comparison, you require more than 10 times as much Heroin to do that.

This illustrates it pretty well; a lethal dose of Heroin (left) and Fentanyl (right): https://www.statnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Heroin-F...

This is why it's been in the news and why you've read about how strong and dangerous it is. Usage in a medical setting is much safer because they have a known purity and precise dispensing and dosage schemes; something you won't find and can't achieve on the street.