Since the early 2000s, there has been an almost invisible killer in the US: fentanyl.
The artificially produced opioid is one of the strongest painkillers ever. It is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and up to 100 times stronger than morphine – and is therefore often abused as a drug.
Two milligrams, so two grains of salt, is enough for an overdose. In the US, one person dies every seven minutes from fentanyl poisoning. The crisis is getting worse every year. This year, the US Anti-Drug Police (DEA) “seized enough fentanyl to kill all Americans”.
Why fentanyl can be accidentally ingested – and how the drug displaces heroin and other substances:
To understand the crisis, we must first look back at another painkiller that has become addictive: Oxycontin.
The surge in drug deaths associated with opioid painkillers is referred to as the opioid crisis or opioid epidemic in the US. The main cause of the crisis was the painkiller Oxycontin from the opioid group, which entered the US market in 1996 and was celebrated as a harmless panacea.
At the time, drug manufacturer Purdue Pharma spoke of an unparalleled breakthrough: just one dose relieves pain for 12 hours – more than twice as long as comparable products on the market to date. Patients no longer have to get up in the middle of the night to take their medication.
With the promise that the painkiller had little addiction potential, Oxycontin became one of America’s top-selling painkillers within a few years. The remedy was even prescribed for everyday pain.
This is remarkable considering that the drug’s main ingredient is oxycodone, a painkiller developed in Frankfurt am Main in 1916 and abused as a drug as early as the 1920s.
Oxycontin was advertised in 1999 under the slogan “The One to Start With and the One to Stay With” – and tragically, it turned out to be true for those treated. Many people fell into a strong addiction. Because opioids have a huge impact on brain chemistry and can quickly lead to addiction.
The drug is considered to be the driver of the US opioid crisis – and the origin of the current fentanyl crisis. Because in the search for a cheap variant, the painkiller fentanyl turned up. The drug had been used in medicine years before. Now his advance to the killer drug followed. Because: The opioid is cheaper.
The history of fentanyl dates back to the 1960s. At first, the opioid was administered as a pain reliever for anesthesia and to treat chronic pain. Even then, critics drew attention to the substance as a possible candidate for substance abuse.
The fears were not unfounded. Because the painkiller morphine had previously made a career as a medicine and intoxicant. But fentanyl is much more potent – it only takes about one-hundredth to get the same effect.
The danger of the powder can hardly be underestimated. Two milligrams of the powder can cause an overdose in an adult.
The odorless powder is a synthetic opioid, so it can be produced artificially in the lab and does not require the raw opium (the milky juice of the poppy) used in the production of other opioids, such as morphine. This in turn gives fentanyl the ‘advantage’ that it is not dependent on crops or crisis countries such as Afghanistan, where poppies are grown.
Because the white powder is more readily available and therefore less expensive than other opioids, fentanyl is often used as a diluent in illicit drugs such as heroin, cocaine, amphetamine, or in compressed tablet form.
The powder is also easier to smuggle. The synthetic opioid is so potent that, according to the Washington Post, a year’s supply of pure fentanyl powder for the US market could fit in the cargo area of two pickup trucks.
In 2013, fentanyl abuse peaked in the United States. The substance is now the “market leader” among opioids abused as drugs. According to the National Library of Medicine, three million people in the United States suffer from opioid addiction — 16 million people worldwide.
The pandemic has exacerbated the opioid epidemic, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With people isolated and many losing their jobs, the drug has become a distraction and comfort.
The Mexican drug cartels Sinaloa and Jalisco are the main sources of illicit fentanyl in the United States, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency. The cartels organize the necessary chemicals mainly in China and India. They smuggle the pills through official border crossings between the US and Mexico in trucks and cars. The pills are distributed to people through social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Co.
The death rate from drug overdose among children and adolescents aged 14 to 18 years has risen from 253 in 2019 to 680 in 2022 in the pandemic years, rising to 884 last year. Nearly 80 percent of deaths were related to fentanyl .
Because fentanyl is often mixed with other substances, the white powder can also be inadvertently consumed, which can lead to accidental death. According to the Drug Enforcement Agency, 25 percent of deaths were related to diluted drugs.
This is how 15-year-old Melanie Ramos died. In September 2022, the student was found dead in the Los Angeles school restroom. The young woman took what she thought was a painkiller and bought it on campus. The cause of death was determined to be a fentanyl overdose. The medicine was contaminated.
In many cases, the question remains unanswered whether the deceased young people took the medicines unintentionally or knew that the pills were counterfeit.
One thing is certain: in the US alone, police seized so many counterfeit drugs this year “to kill all Americans with them”. Lab tests found that six out of 10 counterfeit drugs contained a “potentially lethal dose” of fentanyl. The Drug Enforcement Agency said:
source: watson
I’m Maxine Reitz, a journalist and news writer at 24 Instant News. I specialize in health-related topics and have written hundreds of articles on the subject. My work has been featured in leading publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, and Healthline. As an experienced professional in the industry, I have consistently demonstrated an ability to develop compelling stories that engage readers.
