(NYT) – A baffling overdose death took investigators to the frontier of ultra-potent synthetic drugs. The clues were hauntingly familiar.

It wasn’t a sedative. It was something new and unknown — and part of an explosion of novel lab-made chemicals that is redefining the illicit drug market. In recent years, hundreds of ultra-potent drugs have emerged, often identified by health authorities and law enforcement only after they have shown up in the toxicology report of someone who has overdosed.

Most of these substances originate in traditional medical research, in scientific papers and patents that were published by legitimate scientists and companies and then copied and modified by illicit chemists. This is the science-to-street pipeline and it has come to dominate the illicit drug market. (Read More)