Fentanyl: The dangers of this potent man-made opioid

Fentanyl is a powerful opioid pain medication as well as a common contaminant found in illicit drugs. The antidote naloxone (Narcan) can reverse the effects of a fentanyl overdose if given in time. Like many health conditions, addiction is due to a combination of genetic and environmental risk factors. Adverse childhood experiences, like trauma and early life stressors, greatly increase the risk of addiction. While addiction to opioids can sometimes begin when patients take prescription opioids for medical reasons, prescription opioid misuse most commonly occurs among people who already misuse other substances.

Can you overdose by ingesting or breathing in fentanyl?

Physical dependence results in withdrawal symptoms when individuals suddenly stop taking the drug. The center’s research has been used to reduce youth substance use, improve the quality of substance use treatment, help veterans with drug-use problems, and reduce alcohol-involved crime. We’ve had an enormous impact not only on policy, but also on how people think about drug problems.

Are there other dangerous synthetic drugs?

• National news headlines don’t point to the city anymore as an epicenter of the nation’s drug epidemic.
• That might be because East Coast drug users favor white-powder heroin, which mixes easily with powdered synthetics (one common mixture is known as “gray death” on the streets).
• People can try NEXT Distro or their state’s Department of Public Health.
• Fentanyl seizures more than quadrupled between 2017 and 2023.
• Today, fentanyl is a mail-order product, marketed on the open internet and shipped directly to consumers and dealers, no international drug cartels required.

If a person is hospitalized or undergoing surgery, a healthcare professional may administer fentanyl as an injection called Sublimaze. At least 10 countries have implemented supervised-consumption sites, where people using drugs at least have trained staffers watching over them in case they overdose. A recent court ruling in Philadelphia suggested there may be a legal pathway to try that approach here. RAND researchers found several Chinese firms willing to ship a kilogram of nearly pure fentanyl to the United States for as little as $2,000.

What is a fentanyl overdose?

Receive free access to exclusive content, a personalized homepage based on your interests, and a weekly newsletter with topics of your choice. You can always take more of a substance, but you can’t take less. There are many things that can impact intoxication, overdose and bad reactions like feeling tired, being sick, or different emotional states. https://ecosoberhouse.com/ But critics of TikTok are probably right in saying that educational content is more popular on the Chinese version of the app, though not necessarily because of anything ByteDance has done. Kids who are put under enormous pressure to get good grades, in other words, might be more interested in videos related to studying than their American peers.

Efforts to prevent fentanyl overdoses

When looking at the number of seizures of illicit fentanyl pills specifically, researchers again found the highest numbers occurring in western states. There, the pills accounted for nearly 78% of all fentanyl seizures in the region last year. The study was led by researchers who participate in the National Drug Early Warning System, a federal program that monitors drug seizures in 33 so-called High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas across the country. The data comes from a mix of federal, state and local law enforcement organizations. In Arizona, more than 2,000 residents died from opioid overdoses in 2021, and the state Department of Health Services reported fentanyl as the most common drug in those deaths.

• Fentanyl can continue to be effective after removing the patch, as the skin has already absorbed the drug.
• While addiction to opioids can sometimes begin when patients take prescription opioids for medical reasons, prescription opioid misuse most commonly occurs among people who already misuse other substances.
• Despite the evidence supporting these measures, however, local politics and funding priorities often limit whether communities are able to give them a try.
• For example, among young people who misuse prescription opioids, 63% have used cannabis and 21% have used cocaine.

A person with a substance use disorder might obtain fentanyl by misusing prescribed medication or acquiring the drug from an illegal laboratory. Misuse of fentanyl includes taking it orally, smoking it, snorting it, or injecting it. In this article, we will discuss the medical uses of fentanyl and its side effects.

Fentanyl is very dangerous, but there are harm reduction tools that can limit its impact.

But its effectiveness at relieving pain and increasing pleasure also have made it a popular street drug with dangerous risks of addiction, overdose and death. Fentanyl is a powerful drug that was designed to be used as a pain-relieving medicine called an analgesic. But it has come to play a major how long does fentanyl stay in your system role in drug overdoses and substance use disorders across the United States. Yes, fentanyl is classified as a Schedule II controlled substance in the U.S. and is available by prescription only. When monitored and used as directed by your physician, it can effectively relieve severe pain.

• A new study published Monday in the International Journal of Drug Policy found that the number of individual pills containing fentanyl that was seized by law enforcement was 2,300 times greater in 2023 than in 2017.
• Other strategies to prevent overdose deaths include lowering the entry barrier to addiction treatment, fentanyl test strips, supervised consumption sites and even prescription diamorphine (heroin).
• “One of my officers in Burlington fainted at the scene of a drug arrest, and he assumed — everybody assumed — it was fentanyl,” said Del Pozo, who was the chief of police in Burlington, Vermont, at the time.
• It’s crucial to use extreme caution when getting medication or products marketed as “natural alternatives” from someone other than your health care provider.
• “We don’t know, because we’re not looking for it,” said Xóchitl Cárdenas, a forensic services chemist at the attorney general’s office in Sonora State, along Mexico’s northern border, where experts say the fentanyl crisis is acute.
• It’s hard to say what made the difference—the community response, the naloxone, or just changing patterns of drug use or supply.

Fentanyl is an opioid 50 times more potent than heroin.

Users wouldn’t even know what was hitting them until it was too late. Unfortunately, fentanyl’s high potency also means that even just a small amount can prove deadly. If the end user isn’t aware that the drug they bought has been adulterated, this could easily lead to an overdose. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that was originally developed as an analgesic – or painkiller – for surgery. It has a specific chemical structure with multiple areas that can be modified, often illicitly, to form related compounds with marked differences in potency.

Will having a high tolerance to another opioid protect you?