A synthetic drug considered 100 times more powerful than fentanyl has been determined to have caused the death of a man by the river, marking the last increase in overdoses involving the synthetic medication, said public health officials.
Carfentanil is a synthetic medication of appendix II with a chemical similar to that of fentanyl and is used in the savage, an anesthesia for elephants, according to the National Medicine Library. A man of the river in his forties was fatally overdosed on the substance in March, but the cause was only officially determined this month, said the health system of the Riverside University press release.
Fentanyl drugs illegally manufactured such as Carfentanil entered the illegal markets in the northeast of the United States as a substitute for the heroine of white powder report. Carfentanil, which is 10,000 times more powerful than morphine, can be fatal to a fraction of the range of two milligrams for fentanyl, said health officials.
“Each lost life of opioids is too much,” said Riverside County Public Health Manager, Dr. Jennifer Chevinsky, said in the statement.
Carfentanil’s overdoses are rare, but increasing, according to the press release. The American deaths involving Carfentanil went from 29 to the first half of 2023 to 238 during the same period last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Carfentanil is defined as an illegally unique fentanyl, an opioid produced without the regulation of fentanyl of pharmaceutical quality. This means that it can be not detected by certain fentanyl test strips, which can lead to an increase in accidental overdoses, have added health officials. Although the global overdoses of opioids have decreased both nationally and in the county of Riverside, according to the press release, the CDC said that the re -emergence of Carfentanil “could threaten this progress”.
“Together, we can continue to raise awareness of the risks associated with drug use and work as a community to support security, reduce damage and take care of each other,” said Chevinsky.
The healthy university health system has recommended that individuals carry naloxone to treat an overdose smell on fentanyl and avoid using carfentanil even in small doses due to the unpredictability and power of the substance.
