The Flavorless Flavor Box in SweeTarts, Skittles and Whoppers: A Case Study on Synthetic Opioids
But there was no candy inside the boxes marked SweeTarts, Skittles, and Whoppers, the sheriff’s department said. Instead, they contained what authorities believe to be thousands of the dangerous pills.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid 50 times more potent than heroin, and up to 100 times more potent than morphine, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
More than 100,000 Americans have died from drug poisonings in the last two years, with most of the deaths being caused by synthetic opioids like Fentanyl.
The study said that the overdose deaths are most likely not the result of more adolescents using drugs, but of increased risks to the drugs themselves.
The pills’ colorful appearance is a “deliberate effort by drug traffickers to drive addiction amongst kids and young adults,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in the alert.
The Los Angeles Police Department announced in March that it was investigating multiple overdoses, including one that ended in the death of a high school student. Investigators said they believe the students bought what they thought were Percocet pills.
After the overdoses, the Los Angeles Unified School District announced its campuses will be equipped with doses of naloxone, a drug used to temporarily reverse the effects of opioid drug overdoses, including from fentanyl.
If more people were to have spray at home or in their pockets, a lot of deaths could be avoided.
Understanding the Effects of Fentanyl in Infants and Other Children: A Panel Discussion on Naloxone as an Overdose-Reversal Injection
Understand the effects of this drug. Fentanyl is a potent and fast-acting drug, two qualities that also make it highly addictive. It is easy to suffer an overdose if you have a small quantity. With fentanyl, there is only a short window of time to intervene and save a person’s life during an overdose.
Stick to licensed pharmacies. Drug dealers who sell illegal drugs like Vicodin and Xanax are often guilty of drugging their drugs with Fentanyl. Only you and your doctors can prescribe the pills that you take.
In recommending that the spray become as easily available as ibuprofen, the 19 voting panelists determined that naloxone, which was approved as an overdose-reversal injection in 1971, is abundantly safe and effective even in infants, with almost no potential for misuse or abuse. The panels concluded that there is no need for medical training to use naloxone.
Side effects, typically symptoms associated with withdrawal, were relatively negligible compared with the medicine’s far greater lifesaving benefit, panel members said. Naloxone, which comes in a nasal spray, a vial and preloaded syringes, is believed to have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Since xylazine and Opioid are often combined, experts still advise administering Narcan if someone is having an overdose. People should know that it will not address the impact of xylazine on breathing, and that they may have to call emergency medical services.
“It’s awful,” said Sherm Sherman, who lives and breathes in Kensington, Pennsylvania, where drugs are illegal in the 21st century
It’s absolutely horrible. That’s the reality, though,” said James Sherman, known as Sherm around Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, where he once used drugs and where he now tries to help those still on the streets.
People who inject xylazine are at risk of developing necrotic skin wounds where they may lead to death and amputation.
The nature of America’s addiction crisis is changing. It has been well known as a place to buy heroin under the elevated rail line, a short distance but a world away from the business and tourist centers of downtown.
A user, Maggie, told CNN what she’s seen. You get a sore when you miss a shot. She said that if you neglect your sore, you will end up in a hospital with a hole. It had happened to her. She got a half-dollar-sized wound after the skin came off and it started out like a scuplture. “I could have lost my hand.”
Dr. Joseph D’Orazio, an emergency physician and addiction medicine specialist at Temple University Hospital, said patients started to have major wounds that were different from typical injection drug use. He said the wounds were a lot more severe and there were big necrotic areas. They were deep in the muscles. Sometimes you can see the bones, and we were starting to see more patients that were requiring amputations.”
“Nobody was coming to Kensington to buy tranq, they were coming to get heroin,” said Laurel of the Savage Sisters group. You do not go to your drug dealer to ask if there is a nutrition label with this. … You get what you get, and you don’t get upset.” She said that even if you don’t get it, you feel a physical compulsion to do it.
Philadelphia xylazine is the most concentrated drug dealer in the United States, according to Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy
Xylazine is most concentrated in Philadelphia, according to Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. In all the 50 states, it is, he told CNN.
xylazine has been seen in Puerto Rico in the 2000s, and that may slow its spread across the nation. But in Kensington, there could be more unintended consequences.
Dana was hospitalized when she stopped taking xylazine. “I’d rather come off fentanyl and heroin put together than xylazine,” she said.
D’Orazio said there needed to be more affordable housing, more access to health care, fewer restrictions on drugs that treat addiction, and less stigma on what he says is a chronic disease, like diabetes. He also mentioned that there needs to be more focus on mental health care and prevention of drug use disorder. His patients tended to have suffered childhood trauma, like abuse and neglect. He said that there needs to be more early intervention for people with trauma.
Maurice said that a lot of people have pain from their past and try to numb themselves after being injected with tranq and Fentanyl.
In conversations with CNN about why they’d come to Savage Sisters, several people brought up painful past experiences like rape or abuse almost immediately, as though those memories were simmering just below the surface. The 66 year old said that it’s been a long life and that he has to face things. I’ve got to get some kind of therapy. When I was five years old, this happened to me.
“The people that are out here numbing their pain with substances, whether it’s heroin, alcohol, cocaine, we need to address the pain, we need to stop isolating the substance and look beyond it,” she said.
Some of the programs for people in its recovery houses are very expensive, but that is what makes it worth it. She has had to work hard to raise money. Nobody cares until it affects them. It is ugly. It is not a good idea to give money or time to others. It’s hard. It’s rough. It’s sad. It’s painful. … I had to come up with ways to convince people that we’re worth saving.”
Some news organizations have called xylazine “the zombie drug.” Laurel does not like that term. “The only way that you can get rid of a zombie is by killing their brain,” she said. Is it possible you would say that about my friends? Why would you say that about a human? It’s already hard enough trying to get people to care about us.”
Adding xylazine can prolong the high of fentanyl, said Joseph Friedman, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The White House is looking at xylazine as a potential “emerging threat,” which would trigger the development of a federal plan to address it, he said. In the meantime, the US Food and Drug Administration says it has taken action to stop unlawful imports of xylazine.
Narcan can’t be used to reverse the effects of the tranquilizer because it isn’t an opiate. Public health officials worry that the spread of xylazine in the opioid supply could render naloxone less effective for some overdoses, the NIH says.
Research suggests that tranq has been part of Puerto Rico’s illegal opioid scene since the early 2000s and made its way to Philadelphia shortly after. It was first seen in toxicology reports there beginning in 2006, according to Substance Use Philly, a division of the city’s health department.
The FDA warned health care professionals about the risks of xylazine being in illegal drugs.
It said in February that it had taken action to make imports of the substance subject to greater FDA scrutiny and give the ability to detain any shipments that appear to be in violation of the law.
The Schumer-Smushroom Plan to Prevent Overdoses of Cylazine, as Sen. Chuck Schumer Rejoinds
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has a plan to prevent overdoses of xylazine, which he held a press conference about this week.
Increasing funding for a federal program that gives law enforcement agencies money to hire more officers and raising the budget for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration are part of the plan.