This wound up being a bit of an effortpost to get buried this deep in the conversation. So it goes.
The synthesis isn’t difficult for a reasonably qualified synthetic chemist. Access to propionic anhydride was always the limiting step - before the explosion in sources for chemical precursors of all kinds the only way to reliably get it would have the DEA on your ass very quickly. There has been gray/black domestic production of fentanyl as long as there’s been fentanyl but never on an industrial scale until the last decade or so.
The actual precursors are by and large being manufactured in other countries (China and India are the biggest producers) and the final synthesis can take place anywhere. Mexican drug trafficking organizations got a crash course in organic chemistry after the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act in 2005 led to the collapse of almost all domestic methamphetamine manufacture. They have the benefit of 20 years’ experience in organic synthesis supplying meth for the North American market that translates very well to making fetty.
As far as I know most illicit fentanyl production for the usamerican market occurs in Mexico, but this is simply a matter of convenience. A handful of guys in the LA area produce more or less the entire usamerican supply of PCP. There’s absolutely no reason if material conditions demand the production move across the border for it not to move across the border.
I don’t know if it was here on hexbear or somewhere else on the internet that I read a comment that the United States has been waging an opium war against itself for 80 years. The nexus between hard-right groups, intelligence organizations, organized crime, and the networks of illicit drug manufacture and distribution is old and runs deep. The fentanyl will continue to flow, manufactured wherever conditions are best for its production.
MS-13² coming soon, what could go wrong?