Boba Fett, blue fish, and fettuccine: How L.A. fentanyl sales boomed on Craigslist

At first glance, the items listed for sale on Craigslist seemed benign: Blue socks. A fancy china set. A collectible action figure.But there was odd lingo slipped into the otherwise mundane posts. The socks were “pressed.” Buyers could “try” a plate from the china set “to guarantee quality.” And the action figure was “pure.” The phrasing was one giveaway they were advertising illicit fentanyl, according to several drug market experts who reviewed dozens of suspicious posts identified by The Times. The open sale of drugs has been a long-standing problem on Craigslist. Over the last decade, a handful of people have overdosed and died after buying fentanyl through the site, yet until recent months The Times found ads for them remained commonplace, especially in Southern California. Advertisement “People have been able to buy drugs on Craigslist for a long time,” said Chelsea Shover, a UCLA researcher who studies drug use. “But these ads seem qualitatively different in how brazen a lot of...