Cape Times E-dition

Illicit pain killers bought online behind mass overdose deaths

THE US Drug Enforcement Administration issued a public warning yesterday that a growing number of pain medications bought on the black market are laced with the synthetic opioid fentanylor and the stimulant methamphetamine, driving overdose deaths to record levels.

DEA administrator Anne Milgram said: “We are in the midst of an overdose crisis, and counterfeit pills are driving much of it.”

The US saw a record number of drug overdose deaths last year – more than 93 000, which marked an increase of almost 30% from 2019.

Officials said the DEA hasn’t issued such a public safety alert since 2015, when the agency warned that agents were seeing an alarming amount of heroin laced with fentanyl. Fentanyl, even in much smaller amounts, is deadlier than street heroin.

The new public safety alert warns Americans that counterfeit pills, often sold on social media or e-commerce websites, increasingly contain fentanyl or sometimes methamphetamine, posing health risks beyond the dangers of buying prescription pills.

The DEA has seized 9.6 million counterfeit pills already this budget year, more than it seized in the previous two years combined, officials said. The number of seized counterfeit pills found to contain fentanyl has jumped 430% since 2019.

The US has been grappling with a worsening drug epidemic since 1999, fuelled primarily by an explosion of opioid use. At first, that drug abuse centred around prescription pain pills, such as Oxycodone, Vicodin or Percocet.

In recent years, the death toll has risen sharply, fuelled in large part by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is relatively cheap to manufacture and distribute. Last year, drug overdoses killed more than twice as many Americans as car crashes.

Milgram said the illicit drug trade in America is increasingly shifting from plant-based products like cocaine or heroin to chemical-driven manufacturing. “There are chemicals largely coming from China to Mexico, where the cartels are mass-producing fentanyl and meth pressing them into pills.”

WORLD

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2021-09-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://capetimes.pressreader.com/article/281668258128983

African News Agency