It seems twisted, but people who are addicted to opioids can hear that there is a lethal batch going around and actually decide that it must be really good shit that they should try to get their hands on. It’s like, “If it’s strong enough to kill you, the high must be amazing.”
Desperate heroin addicts have developed strong tolerance to their drug of choice, leading them to experiment combining other narcotics with heroin. In their quest to get high, addicts have turned to acetyl fentanyl. Fentanyl is a synthetic opiate used to treat chronic pain, often administered to cancer patients in low doses via sprays or patches. Now, fentanyl is being produced in powder form specifically for the purpose of being combined with heroin. Addicts inject heroin laced with fentanyl into their veins, which allegedly caused more than 80 deaths in a span of less than two months earlier this year.
Dealers have given the drug many different names, including New World, Bingo 9, Income Tax, Theraflu, and Shine. According to the Director of the Center for Substance Abuse Research at Temple University, “The dealers push this as being a super high, which it is, but it’s also lethal.” As if heroin itself isn’t dangerous enough, fentanyl adds a whole new level of toxicity. Some addicts are not even aware they are injecting themselves with this new drug because it is being marketed as regular heroin. Addicts unsuspectingly inject themselves with the same amount of heroin as usual, but with the addition of fentanyl they are at even greater risk of overdosing.
The epicenter of the heroin-fentanyl problem in the United States is the East Coast, primarily Baltimore. It is estimated around 37 people in Maryland died from this lethal drug combination in February alone. Additionally, there were 22 deaths in Pennsylvania and 25 in Rhode Island. In Connecticut, heroin deaths have risen nearly 48% since 2012.
Even without fentanyl, heroin is a very powerful opioid that can easily kill someone, especially if they’ve let their tolerance abate a little bit. The most at-risk people are those who have managed to quit for several weeks or more and then relapse. But the same thing can happen with fentanyl where the user badly underestimates the power of what they’re taking. What’s amazing is there is actually a strong demand for something so goddamned lethal, but what goes on in the ravished mind of the opioid addict defies logic.
And the people selling this stuff have no souls.