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Yet in its National Drug Threat Assessment, the DEA plays down the wholesale theory. “The overwhelming majority of fentanyl reports and cocaine reports submitted to NFLIS contain only fentanyl or only cocaine," the report states. "This, along with law enforcement reporting, indicates most cocaine-fentanyl mixtures are most likely not mixed at the wholesale level and the majority are probably unintentional.” The title of the editioned set, The Night You Left, suggests a lonely narrative, a moment of solitude when one might turn to drugs not for glamour or excitement, but for revelry and longing. “There is a certain magic in loneliness,” Hod explains, “you have to be alone to create.” He adds, “It’s not about drugs or glamour—it’s about the inside world, where you can dream and love and seek a greater truth—it’s about a feeling of being connected to something so human.” The gates to fentanyl have now swung open, and there is risk for recreational drug users. But it is not an evenly distributed one. To say, as Kellyanne Conway does, that fentanyl is “indiscriminate” and can be found in any street drug deal, is not merely misleading. It's a narrative that distracts from the needs of the thousands of people who will be killed by fentanyl-contaminated opioids this year. It has always been the case that the threat from tainted drugs disproportionately affects the most disadvantaged people in society. There is no debate about the seriousness of the opioid crisis, a national emergency in which 47,000 US citizens died from opioid-related overdoses in 2017. The key driver behind the escalation of fatal overdoses has been fentanyl, now the most deadly illegal drug in America. Alongside similar synthetic opioids such as carfentanil, fentanyl was involved in 28,000 of the 70,000 total drug overdose deaths in America in 2017. Clarification 4/5/19: This story has been updated to clarify that Dr. Mary T. Bassett was New York's Health Commissioner at the time of the press release cited in this article, but has since left the position.
Looking for some interesting for your friends and your parties? Do not miss these funny cocaine coaster kit. Added to this, the heroin these people are buying is not just being increasingly cut with fentanyl, but is being completely replaced by it. In his study published in February into the drivers of the US opioid epidemic, Professor Daniel Ciccarone, a leading authority on US drug markets at the University of San Francisco, said that in some parts of the US “what is driving increases in opioid mortality now are deaths due to fentanyl-adulterated or fentanyl-substituted heroin.” Do dealers wipe the table down after chopping heroin before chopping out their cocaine? No. Now with fentanyl in the food chain, this cross-contamination has become meaningful, because it’s so much more potent."The last thing that is needed now in the long battle against the opioid crisis is a misguided mission creep, where exaggerated and misleading public messages begin to dictate an expanded drug policy that stretches resources used to support vulnerable users. Prof Ciccarone sums it up well. “A moral panic both stems from and feeds fear. And fear inhibits us from our best actions.”
The rising devastation caused by fentanyl is closely linked to a jump in heroin use, itself influenced by an increase in recreational painkiller use. Many of America's heroin users were first addicted to prescription opioids, but switched because heroin became easier or cheaper to get than prescription pills. To feed growing demand for heroin, criminal gangs started mixing fentanyl into heroin batches, and to a lesser extent counterfeit opioid pills, because it saved money. As a result, deaths among heroin users soared, from 8,200 in 2013 to 15,000 in 2017.We have a problem on our hands with fentanyl. It's here, it's not going anywhere. But if we don't change the narrative and try something new, it will only get worse.” Fuentes, who has witnessed first-hand the disconnect between the reality of the street drug trade and the way it is represented by police, the government, and the media, said he believes the publicity over cocaine laced with fentanyl is a cynical attempt by police and public services to push their own agendas. The difference between the claims and the facts is even more alarming when it comes to fentanyl’s infiltration into other recreational drugs. Despite a flurry of claims by district attorneys, coroners, and government health officials about fentanyl-laced cannabis and similar claims about fentanyl in MDMA, the DEA reports that there have been “no indications of marijuana and fentanyl identified” and “no exhibits found to contain fentanyl and MDMA.” Mixtures of methamphetamine with fentanyl are “a rare occurrence,” with only 18 out of thousands of methamphetamine samples tested by the DEA testing positive for fentanyl since 2014. I don’t think this is purposeful cutting, I don’t buy the evil dealer hypothesis,” said Ciccarone. “Both cocaine and heroin get stepped on many times before they hit the street, and sometimes they accidentally get mixed up. Do dealers wipe the table down after chopping heroin before chopping out their cocaine? No. There has always been bits of heroin in cocaine because of this, but not actually in meaningful amounts. But now with fentanyl in the food chain, this cross-contamination has become meaningful, because it’s so much more potent.” The people who are overdosing with cocaine and fentanyl in their bodies are not your average coke user, according to Dr. Kendra Viner, Opioids Program Manager at Philadelphia’s Department of Public Health. “People who died from overdose with cocaine and fentanyl in their system look similar demographically and in death scene presentation to those who died from overdose with cocaine and heroin,” said Viner.
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