Deaths from heroin have risen in the US since the importation of carfentanil in toner cartridges from China.
Abc2news reported that there had been “five heroin deaths in five days in Hartford County”, Maryland, and County Sheriff, Jeffrey Gahler, said that a new drug could be causing the rise in deaths, as “over the Thanksgiving weekend, we suffered an increase in our heroin overdose numbers”. Gahler also commented that some of the people who died were from outside of the state but were passing through when they used the drugs.
He added that “this is a pace for fatal overdoses that we have not experienced yet and we hope it’s just an anomaly and I’’s not going to continue, but we fear what we’re seeing across the state and across the country that it might be the new norm that we all might have to get used to”, noting that there had been “48 deaths so far in 2016” as opposed to 27 heroin-related deaths in 2015.
Officials believe the heroin is laced with fentanyl which is “50 times more potent than heroin”, and a new addition – carfentanil, a synthetic opiate mixed with heroin – is so powerful that just a few granules can sedate an elephant, with authorities noting it is a new threat in the drug world, and could cause even more deaths.
In Maryland more than 500 people have died this year alone, but as yet this drug has not been discovered there. Gahler is waiting for autopsy reports to see if carfentanil was a cause, adding that “we won’t know until the medical examiner’s reports come back, but we haven’t seen it yet. We’re hopeful we never see it, but we’re not naive to think we won’t, so we’re fearful that that could be at play here or just fentanyl or heroin itself, it just seems to get worse”.
The spread of the drug is being closely monitored by the drug enforcement agency, and Special Agent Todd Edwards commented that “in the United States, it’s used primarily as a tranquiliser for large animals, so it’s a Schedule II narcotic because it has a medical use but it’s not meant to be used for humans”. Only 19 grams a year is legally produced in the US, but Edwards said that dealers were importing the drug from China.
He added that “you can go on the dark web, you can go on places on the internet and order it and companies will send it to you from China under fake labels like toner printer or toner cartridges and they’ll ship it to wherever you want”, as The Recycler reported. The dealers then mix it with a small amount of heroin to make a bigger profit, and Edwards added that “if it’s not mixed up right or they use too much and you being a user gets a batch that has too much carfentanil or fentanyl in it, you die. It’s as simple as that”.
Death statistics would probably be higher if it wasn’t for narcan, an antidote for fentanyl, but not as effective for carfentanil, noted Edwards. Paramedics found that overdoses from heroin or fentanyl needed one spray to revive them, whereas those who took carfentanil needed as many as five or seven sprays to do the same.