The Mafia may be keeping fentanyl out of Italy
by runeks on 9/25/2026, 10:20:20 AM
https://economist.com/europe/2026/09/24/the-mafia-may-be-keeping-fentanyl-out-of-italy
Comments
by: qoez
I always assumed this was an america-only drug that no one actually does or at least not to the excess that it's claimed by the publications using it for the normal fear journalism purposes.
9/25/2026, 11:36:57 AM
by: bilekas
I'm no expert, but I've always thought that adding much more risk to the lives of your customers unnecessarily is not good for business.
9/25/2026, 11:08:29 AM
by: hnrprtlpdb
Did wastewater drug monitoring for a while, and the annoying bit was fentanyl metabolites sitting near the detection limit, so absence isn't proof.
9/25/2026, 10:54:33 AM
by: dotcoma
And who is keeping it out of the other European countries?
9/25/2026, 11:36:04 AM
by: lawgimenez
From what I’ve read online Ndrangheta are much more powerful than the mafia in Italy.
9/25/2026, 11:39:15 AM
by: pluc
This was the way it worked up here (in QC) with the 81s. If you sold shit that could draw attention to you, your organization or suppliers, you were swiftly taught not to. They had decent quality control, but as their grip slipped so did quality. Now we get fentanyl overdoses weekly.
9/25/2026, 11:09:16 AM
by: genericacct
I'm afraid some crime syndicates have found out they can just steal it from hospitals, some 80 vials went missing from the ospedale israelitico in Rome during the summer and there are already reports of an increase of users in the outskirts of the city..
9/25/2026, 11:28:10 AM
by: aswegs8
Feels like they caught up to internet archive being used to circumvent paywalls. Unfortunate.
9/25/2026, 11:03:02 AM
by: pbodyvstheworld
[flagged]
9/25/2026, 11:09:32 AM
by: LastTrain
Or, they may not. TL;DR correlation is not causation.
9/25/2026, 10:53:27 AM
by: glimshe
"For years I paid my people extra so they wouldn't do that kind of business. Somebody comes to them and says, 'I have powders; if you put up three, four thousand dollar investment, we can make fifty thousand distributing.' So they can't resist. I want to control it as a business, to keep it respectable. I don't want it near schools! I don't want it sold to children! That's an infamia."<p>When AI can write screenplays like this one, <i>then</i> it's game over.
9/25/2026, 11:01:17 AM
by: be8e9dmrro
Why not goverment "is keeping fentanyl out of italy"?<p>If you would sell unaproved medication during covid, you would get several years in prison.<p>Why someone who sells unapproved medication without prescription, gets released and can keep selling this stuff? Medication thst kills people!!!
9/25/2026, 11:27:55 AM