Overdose deaths among black men in Ohio are actually increasing, he adds.
His organisation works with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on a drug sampling programme. Participants bring their needles or pipes for swabbing and the samples are sent to the CDC’s laboratory in North Carolina.
That’s how we learned that Mike’s instincts were right, he likely wasn’t just smoking fentanyl. One of the drug kits he brought in tested positive for medetomidine.
“The drug supply in 2026 is this: we think we are buying crack but we’re not, we’re buying a number of different things,” says Scott. “Today it is mixed, not just cut, but mixed with other drugs such as fentanyl or meth, and then other adulterants chemicals that are made in basements.”
And it was basement-made synthetic drugs that would cause a dramatic increase in overdose deaths one state over, in Illinois.
I meet a dealer in Chicago who works for the Mexican cartels selling fentanyl. He would only speak to us if we agreed to mask his identity.
Challenged on his role in the 50,000 people dying each year because of the opioid crisis, he says he knows it is wrong. But when asked why he keeps doing it, he said the end justifies the means.
He told me that despite the latest efforts by the US government to target the cartels by declaring them terrorist groups and labelling fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction, his supply chain is as strong as ever.
When I ask him if the targeting of boats containing suspected traffickers by the Trump administration has made any difference, he replies that his product is still getting through from Mexico.
“If it doesn’t go over the wall, it goes under the wall. If it doesn’t go through the border, it comes through the top border. This game is about adaptability.”
And when I asked what has changed in his business, his answer was clear.
“Synthetics. We haven’t seen… what synthetics can do yet. It’s not even the tip of the iceberg,” he tells me.