Ben Westhoff ed.,"Lives Interrupted: The Fentanyl Tragedy" (Arsenault Family Foundation, 2026)
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What is the premise of Lives Interrupted and why focus on personal stories instead of statistics?
Welcome to the New Books Network. Hi, and welcome to New Books Network. I'm your host, Emily Dufton, and today I'm talking to Ben Westhoff, the editor of Lives Interrupted, The Fentanyl Tragedy, which was just released by the Arsenaux Family Foundation, a nonprofit in Colorado. Lives Interrupted is not your normal fentanyl book. It's not about cartels or chemicals or global drug trafficking. Instead, it's about real human beings, dozens of them, from across the United States and Canada, who lost their lives to this mercilessly potent drug. The book contains 80 profiles, 76 of fentanyl victims, and four of survivors that depict these people in full. Based on interviews with surviving family members, the profiles showcase the hidden talents, mirthful laughs, and quiet sense of understanding that made these 80 individuals more than just their overdose deaths.
The goal of Lives Interrupted is in its subtitle, to put a human face on a tragedy too often discussed only in numbers. So I'm thrilled to have Ben here to talk about it today. Welcome back to the new Books Network, Ben.
Thanks, Emily. It's great to be back.
Yeah, well, so saying you're back suggests that you've been here before, and indeed you have. Uh, I actually had you here on the New Books Network back in twenty twenty two, about three years after you released your banger of a book, Fentanyl Inc., how rogue chemists are creating the deadliest wave of the opioid epidemic. Um, can you tell us a bit about this book and how it came to be?
Yeah, I was originally planning to write a cultural history of ecstasy, the drug, but after poking around started realizing that most so called ecstasy pills did not have any actual MDMA in them. Instead they were cut with all these brand new chemicals coming out of China. These are all synthetic chemicals that had these names no one had much heard of. And so I really went down the rabbit hole and and learned that fentanyl was the most deadly of all of these new drugs. And this was a time when fentanyl was, you know, already killing people, but almost no one knew anything about it. So I really pursued um trying to figure out the origins of this drug. And that That ultimately took me to China where I went undercover inside um some Chinese drug operations, a lab that was making fentanyl, and also uh this huge chemical company that was making fentanyl precursors that were being sold to the Mexican cartels.
And that's pretty incredible.
Yeah, but you're you're really early in this, right? If your book comes out in 2019, I'm assuming you're doing all this research and and undercover uh trips to China it probably like at least a couple of years before that, right? When are you doing all of this?
Yeah, like 2018, I was in China, and um yeah, all this stuff was still legal in China at the time and You know, since then the book has really, I think, had a big impact on sort of the level of government and legislation. And I've, you know, been testify I've testified on Capitol Hill a couple of times and consulted with all sorts of, you know, um levels in federal government. And, you know, it was pretty outrageous to a lot of people that China was not only allowing the production of of fentanyl and these precursors, but actually subsidizing them with government money.
Right. That's extraordinary. And can you just tell us briefly how you actually went undercover? You're like just just hanging out in a Chinese chemical factory?
Well, I posted to these companies online. They were all operating on the clear web. You know, you just Google buy fentanyl in China. And since it's legal in China, these companies didn't feel the need to hide. And so I said I was a drug trafficker and uh I had a fake Avatar fake name and I I uh I inquired with the salespeople about the chemicals and I said if I came to China could I see their labs and some of them said yes. So so I went there and um you know it was it was kind of scary in in parts, but it wasn't like I was infiltrating a Mexican cartel where
How did Ben Westhoff’s undercover work in China uncover the fentanyl supply chain?
People had AK-47s, and you know, it was more like nerdy scientists were running these labs.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the premise of Lives Interrupted and why focus on personal stories instead of statistics?
0:00–4:39
2
How did Ben Westhoff’s undercover work in China uncover the fentanyl supply chain?
4:39–9:30
3
What impact did his earlier book Fentanyl Inc. have on policy and public awareness?
9:30–12:57
4
How were the 80 profiles for Lives Interrupted selected and compiled?
12:57–16:53
5
What motivated families of victims to participate in the project?
16:53–21:09
6
How does the book’s design (photos, maps, coffee‑table format) enhance its message?
21:09–25:03
7
What has been the response from grieving families and policymakers since the launch?
25:03–26:47
8
What are Ben Westhoff’s next projects and how will they continue the conversation on fentanyl?
26:47–27:12