Potent drug blamed for 60 U.S. overdoses
Substance cut into heroin more dangerous than fentanyl
Midwest health officials worried this would happen.
It’s why they brought together a tri-state coalition of Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky to talk about the dangers, and it’s why they issued a stern, desperate warning last month to first responders and addiction counsellors who patrol the front lines of the opioid war every day.
But their plea could not prevent the heroin on their streets from being cut and sold with a new opioid analogue 100 times more potent than fentanyl and 10,000 stronger than morphine.
In chemical terms, it’s called carfentanil. Colloquially, it’s an elephant tranquilizer.
It’s the most potent opioid used commercially, strong enough to knock out, or even kill, a 15,000-lb. pachyderm, and used primarily to sedate other large animals, such as ox, moose and buffalo.
In an attempt to stretch their supply and deliver a stronger, longer high, drug dealers are cutting their heroin with carfentanil, which is far more dangerous than its already troublesome but less potent cousin, fentanyl.
In a 48-hour window this week, two counties near the Ohio-Indiana border may have been hit with a dangerous wave of it.
On Tuesday night, officers responded to at least 11 overdose cases in Jennings County, Ind. That same day and into Wednesday evening, authorities in Hamilton County, Ohio, home to Cincinnati, received more than 50 heroin overdose calls, TV station WCPO reported.
Just last weekend about 30 other overdoses were reported in Hamilton County, Newtown Police Chief Tom Synan told Fox 19.
Authorities have been careful not to speculate whether the overdoses across the two states are connected, or whether they all came from one particularly potent batch of heroin, but police said that is likely the case.
It may have been mixed with fentanyl, carfentanil or even rat poison, which makes it that much harder to treat overdose patients.
Fentanyl and carfentanil are mixed into the heroin in nearly untraceable doses. Both are colourless and odourless. Often, users don’t even know until it’s too late.
“It’s not like they hand you your dope and say, ‘Here’s the carfentanil dope,’ ” former heroin user Jessica Sageser told WCPO. “You don’t know. The seriousness of it has escalated so much more, because this drug is, like, indescribable. It’s a snap of the fingers and the blink of an eye, and you are done.”
A dose of carfentanil the size of a grain of salt could kill a person, and can even be lethal when absorbed through the skin, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The Hamilton County Heroin Coalition, which works with law enforcement officials in southeast Indiana and northern Kentucky, is still investigating the widespread spate of overdoses this week.