Drug dealers are mixing a very high potency animal tranquilizer called carfentanil into their heroin to not only increase the potency of the product but to make it go further.
In two counties near the Ohio-Indiana border this week, dozens of drug overdoses occurred, up to 60 in a 48-hour period, and authorities believe they were all attributed to heroin laced with carfentanil, fentanyl, and apparently as an added bonus, rat poison.
According to CNN affiliate WCPO in Cincinnati, on Wednesday in Hamilton County, Ohio, police reported a spike in heroin overdoses, with 36 ODs and two deaths. One of the deaths was a man in his 30s who died in the parking lot of a Rally’s Hamburgers.
Hamilton County Heroin Task Force Director Tom Synan says that more than one dealer may be involved, adding that all of the overdoses are in the same west side area of Cincinnati. Synan said there have been almost 90 overdoses since the weekend, which is a huge jump from the usual 25 or so ODs usually seen.
Over in Indiana, near the Ohio border, there were 12 overdoses and one death during the same period on Tuesday, says Seymour Police Chief Bill Abbott. That death was a 52-year-old Jennings County woman. All those who survived were revived using naloxone, the youngest being a 16-year-old.
“Due to Tuesday’s overdoses, our troopers and deputies with the Jennings County Sheriff’s Department continually ran out of the drug and had to restock from the EMS personnel, hospital and the remaining doses we had at our post,” Police Sgt. Stephen Wheeles said.
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, carfentanil is an analog of fentanyl. All this means is that it has a similar chemical structure. Both these products are Schedule II drugs, meaning that they are high-risk for abuse.
Carfentanil is an extremely powerful narcotic, about 100,000 times more powerful than morphine. It is so dangerous it can be absorbed through the skin and is capable of taking out a seven-ton elephant, according to the Washington Post.
Dr. Rob Hilsenroth, executive director of the American Association of Zoo Veterinarians, told the National Post that carfentanil is so potent that most vets use “just a little bit short of a hazmat suit” to handle the drug when preparing to use it as a sedative for animals.
One physician summed up the increase in heroin addiction and overdoses and the medical community’s helplessness quite well. “We’re using horses against tanks,” a Kentucky doctor with St. Elizabeth Physicians tells Cincinnati.com, And there is more to this story.
Carfentanil-laced heroin has made its way into Canada, Kentucky, Florida, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, and that is just the states we know about right now. Back in Ohio, police found out one heroin dealer was giving the poisonous mix of heroin and carfentanil away free.
Any reasonable and halfway intelligent person would think twice about taking something they have been warned could kill them, or so it seems. But if you think real hard on this tainted heroin problem going on in the U.S. and Canada right now, it really makes me wonder if there isn’t a plot to kill off all our young people and everyone else in between by poisoning them. This is ridiculous and it is costing this country millions of dollars.
