Prepare to deal with harms of fentanyl

Dalilah Julianna Mederos Guerrero was 12 when she died. Paris Serrano and Alexander Neville were both 14 when they overdosed.

This week, the drug that took their lives in the United States was discovered for the first time in New Zealand: fentanyl.

Preliminary tests of the white, powdered substance that put 12 people in hospital in Wairarapa over the weekend came back positive for the synthetic opioid. Testing continues as police work “urgently to determine the source of the drug and its prevalence in the community”.

The urgency is justified.

The United States is in the grips of an opioid public health crisis, in which fentanyl has had a growing prominence — and death toll — for a decade.

In 2020, 57,834 deaths were attributed to fentanyl overdoses, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Last year it was 71,238 — more than meth and cocaine combined.

The CDC says fentanyl can be up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine.

The highly addictive drug comes in prescription and illicitly produced forms. In recent years, it has been found in fake pills and laced into other drugs.

While some use it habitually, many of those it killed — likely, it is believed, including Dalilah, Paris and Alexander — may not have known they were taking it.

CDC: “Drugs may contain deadly levels of fentanyl, and you wouldn’t be able to see it, taste it, or smell it. It is nearly impossible to tell if drugs have been laced with fentanyl unless you test your drugs with fentanyl test strips.”

The strips are exactly what Kiwi drug users are now being advised to buy and use. New Zealand police say the Wairarapa drug was sold as either cocaine or methamphetamine, and cut with a “sugar-type substance”.

“The discovery of powdered fentanyl in New Zealand is of significant concern, due to the harm caused internationally by the synthetic opioid,” Detective Inspector Blair Macdonald, National Drug Intelligence Bureau manager, says.

The NZ Drug Foundation and other experts say New Zealand is unprepared for this. Concerns include low stocks of the life-saving overdose reversal drug naloxone.

Its executive director, Sarah Helm, also called for the replacement of the 1975 Misuse of Drugs Act “so we have the tools we need to prevent and deal with this”.

Kiwis have seen the havoc wrecked by meth. Fentanyl appears to present an even greater risk of harm. Authorities have no excuse not to be prepared.