Fentanyl — the SNEAKY, DEADLY KILLER.
(CNN)They might as well be playing Russian Roulette. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about a teenager chasing a higher high or a mega star trying to soothe chronic pain. The counterfeit pills they may be reaching for are more deadly than ever, experts say.
Why? One word: fentanyl.
“Synthetic fentanyl showing up in the street drug supply is an enormous game changer,” says Carol Falkowski, CEO of Drug Abuse Dialogues, a group that helps track drug trends for the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “It means anybody who purchases illegal drugs can unknowingly be taking fentanyl, which is 100 times stronger than morphine.”
All it takes is a dose of fentanyl the size of three grains of sand to kill.
Fentanyl powder is cheap and easy to obtain on the dark web, experts warn, making it attractive to those manufacturing it into pill form mixed with other drugs.
Those counterfeit drugs are sold on the street, and usually dangerously usually labeled as something less potent. Even forensic scientists can’t tell whether some of the pills sold on the street are counterfeit or not just by looking at them. That’s how good the counterfeiters have gotten at making the illicit drugs.
Those who take fake prescriptions likely have no idea if fentanyl is inside, or how much.
“They should be known as a kill pill,” Falkowski says.
Prince Rogers Nelson’s death may turn out to be the most famous example of the dangers posed by counterfeit fentanyl. Pills found in his Minnesota home were reportedly marked as hydrocodone, but when tested the pills turned out to have fentanyl in them. No one has said if Prince took those pills. But he did die of fentanyl toxicity, according to the autopsy report.
Fentanyl is an opioid. Its effect on the body is exactly like heroin, or any other opiate-based medication. But fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin, up to 100 times stronger than morphine. It is stronger than any prescription painkiller on the market.
“All opiates are just oral heroin. There is no difference to the body,” Minneapolis emergency medicine physician Chris Johnson says.
Tracking and taxing the epidemic
The drug that killed Prince is showing up in counterfeit form across the US with devastating effects.
Long before Prince died of a fentanyl overdose, the Drug Enforcement Administration was preparing a document to share with law enforcement around the country. It was a warning. Weeks after Prince died, the document was published, and titled “Counterfeit Prescription Pills Containing Fentanyls: A Global Threat.”
“Prince is the most notable and famous person who tragically died from an opioid overdose. But we are seeing it in every town in Minnesota.” U.S Senator Amy Klobuchar, who represents Minnesota, told CNN.
Original article contains several videos and graphs:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/26/health/prince-minnesota-fentanyl-counterfeit-pills/index.html
By Sara Sidner and Mallory Simon, CNN