People addicted to Oxycontin often resort to desperate measures, including buying their pills on the street. Unfortunately, addicted persons who buy these pills are discovering that they’re fake street pills. They are now being linked to carfentanil and cyclopropyl fentanyl overdoses in New Jersey and across the country. New Jersey is just one of many states that has experienced deadly incidents of street pills – typically sold as Oxycontin or Hydrocodone — giving their users more than they bargained for.
Luckily, in Holmdel and Long Branch New Jersey, investigators were able to seize the pills before anyone got hurt – as far as they know, anyway. (It takes months for a state Bureau of investigation to tally the figures that include deaths from any illicit drugs.) The seizure was made last week, and the oxycodone pills were found to not contain oxycodone at all. In fact, they contained carfentanil, a synthetic opiate that is 10,000 times as strong as morphine. The drug is so strong that a non-drug user can experience an overdose if just a speck or two is absorbed through their skin. It’s used to sedate elephants and is entirely unsafe for people.
Some of the fakes seized in New Jersey also contained cyclopropyl fentanyl, which has no known medical use for humans or animals and is said to be about 50 times stronger than heroin.
Cyclopropyl fentanyl is also a dangerous new trend among street pills fakes – like carfentanil, it’s a powerful opioid. While recently found in New Jersey, this drug is tied to several mass overdose incidents across the US. Georgia linked the drug to an incident that flooded emergency rooms for 48 hours last July, with several fatal overdoses that never made it to the hospital.
Fake pills are often sold on the street, and US authorities suspect they originate in China. The carfentanil and cyclopropyl fentanyl pills found in Monmouth County, New Jersey were meant to masquerade as Oxycodone, and both were a bright white pill marked A/215, the same number that prescription drug website show as Oxycodone.
There is virtually no way for drug users to differentiate fake street pills from real pills, although sometimes they crumble easily or have a tinge of yellow, according to authorities.
These powerful and deadly opiates have also found their way into heroin as well.
If someone you know and love is addicted to prescription painkillers or opioids, it’s important to encourage them and/or their friends to carry naloxone, a lifesaving opiate antagonist that can reverse an overdose. Let them know there is help whenever they are ready, and encourage them to contact a treatment or 12-step hotline to explore their options. Sometimes a list of phone numbers kept in their wallet may be effective to help them when they’re desperate and in need of a person who understands what they’re going through.
People do get clean, and they do recover.
