Ben Westhoff, the author of the bestselling expose Fentantyl, Inc., recently joined Writing and Publishing students at Lincoln Park for a master class in journalism.
Bestselling author Ben Westhoff. Photo by Yana Hotter.
Westhoff, who went undercover in China to research and report his expose of the global opioid epidemic, advised the staff of The SIREN to be persistent in their reporting.
“You have to be determined,” Westhoff told members of Lincoln Park’s school newspaper, during a Zoom visit in December. “A lot of people are going to try to put you off. You just have to keep digging.”
Westhoff’s book, subtitled “How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic,” was published in 2019 by Atlantic Monthly Press and has since been featured on numerous “Best-of” lists.
USA Today praised the book as “(a)n impressive work of investigative journalism,” while popular podcast host Joe Rogan — who invited Westhoff on his show as a guest — called it a “really fascinating book on a terrifying subject.”
Westhoff told students about his visits to Chinese laboratories where fentanyl is produced and sold to buyers from around the world. He admitted that there were times he worried about his safety.
Ultimately, he said, “I just felt like this was a story that needed to be told.”
Westhoff got his start working for the alternative weeklies Riverfront Times and L.A. Weekly. He has written two previous books, both of them widely praised histories of hip hop. His 2011 book Dirty South: OutKast, Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, and the Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop was a Library Journal best seller.
Meanwhile, Academy Award nominee S. Leigh Savidge, the co-writer of the film Straight Outta Compton, said that Westhoff’s 2016 book Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap, "may be the best book ever written about the hip hop world."
Westhoff has also written for the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, the Guardian, and Vice. In addition, he has advised government officials about the fentanyl epidemic.