For the last 100 yrs – or so – we have had a relative equilibrium in the number of people abusing some substance – other than alcohol or tobacco – about 1%-2% of the population. Why would drug dealers create a more lethal mix of Heroin and Fentanyl… that is the craziest “business plan” I have ever heard of … killing off your customer base. It would appear that the bureaucrats are coming to the rescue of helping keep – or increase – the number of people abusing some substance… they are making Naloxone more readily available -the antidote to a opiate overdose. They claim that in Indiana since it became more widely available that 1000 lives have been saved.. They don’t say if that is only 100 people that have been “rescued ” 10 different times each… you know .. “frequent fliers”. Maybe the bureaucrats are just trying to “grow” the pool of “addicts/abusers” they keep our judicial system in business… because with the reducing of prescribers writing opiate Rxs… these people have to result to robbing pharmacies, stealing from pts and other violent and non-violent crimes… it keeps the street gangs and cartels in business… and all the dead bodies resulting from “turf wars” over selling drugs on the street. The DEA is loosing the jurisdiction over MJ and MMJ… so is there “hidden agenda” here to protect budgets and staffing levels ?
Antidote for heroin overdose could be more available under proposed bill
INDIANAPOLIS – Hoosiers with loved ones or friends with a heroin addiction may be able to save their lives in the event of an overdose if a bill moving through the General Assembly becomes law.
Naloxone – also known as Narcan – is an intervention drug that reverses heroin overdose effects. The drug is administered through a syringe – without a needle – and shot into the user’s nose.
Under a law passed last year, only first responders, police officers, and EMTs can carry the syringe filled with the antidote.
Kristen Kelley, the director of the Indiana Prescription Drug Task Force, said heroin usage is a growing problem in the state. She said that can be attributed the decreasing number of prescriptions written for prescription painkillers.
NEWS FLASH !!!!
“We’ve noticed that there has been a significant decrease in the amount of prescriptions that have been issued for opioids but the unintended consequence is that the use of heroin has increased,” Kelley said.
DEA Warns About Powerful Opioid
http://www.dailyrx.com/fentanyl-deemed-public-health-threat
(dailyRx News) Fentanyl, a powerful opioid drug often used to relieve pain for terminally ill patients, may have some much more dangerous uses.
It’s often used in heroin to increase the drug’s potency, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). That’s part of the reason the DEA issued a warning about fentanyl Wednesday.
And it looks like people are producing the drug illegally.
“Often laced in heroin, fentanyl and fentanyl analogues produced in illicit clandestine labs are up to 100 times more powerful than morphine and 30-50 times more powerful than heroin,” said DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart in a press release. “Fentanyl is extremely dangerous to law enforcement and anyone else who may come into contact with it.”
In 2013, there were 942 fentanyl-related seizures in the US, according to the DEA. That figure spiked to 3,344 in 2014.
Filed under: General Problems
Somewhere else I read and I’m sorry I couldnt get the article to copy that they admitted the Fentanyl laced Heroin was coming from Mexico and not being produced in the US. The other ‘Fun Fact’ is these ‘rescued addicts’ arent being arrested…they’re being rescued and released from the hospitals, I’m sure they are being offered treatment and refusing and then sent on their way. While if they were out on the street using but not OD’ing they’d be arrested and in jail..Go figure…talk about your hypocrites.
And that comment makes Fentanyl sound like Meth…’extremely dangerous to law enforcement and anyone else who comes in contact with it” ….how many times I had it in the hospital for a procedure and dispensed it in the hospital and LTC….maybe I should have been decontaminated before going home.