Recently, a number of people close to our organization have reached out because they have lost children to counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl. While it didn’t make the newspapers like the fentanyl-related deaths of
Mac Miller and
Tom Petty, it was no less of a tragedy as the heartache reverberated among family and friends.
The danger of “laced” drugs isn’t new. Many of the substances sold on the street are laced with “cutting agents,” more potent substances or disguised as another drug altogether. These can be laundry detergent, talcum powder or rat poison. For example, marijuana can be laced with embalming fluid, or the hallucinogen PCP. But one of the most dangerous is
fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine. Fentanyl is showing up in cocaine, heroin, other pain medications like Percocet and Oxycodone, and in prescription anxiety medications like Xanax.
According to a
CDC report, deaths related to fentanyl increased 45% in 2017 alone. Synthetic drugs are often more deadly not only because of how strong they are, but also because of the ever-changing ways in which they are blended into other substances. This makes it difficult for people to know not only what they are taking, but also the strength of the drug.
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