mr peabody
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2016
- Messages
- 5,714
Dangerous drug carfentanyl found in LSD blotters
Health officials in Canada are warning the public about blotters laced with the potentially deadly drug, carfentanyl, a very powerful pain medication. Carfentanyl is 100 times stronger than fentanyl. Police discovered the blotters after a 59-year-old man was found in physical distress and a family member called 911 on Jan 23. He died three days later in hospital. They believe
the blotters also contained LSD and were purchased through an online black market supplier.
Spokesperson Genevieve Major said the carfentanyl discovered in this case is so potent that even touching the substance with uncovered skin can transmit the opioid into a users system. Canada's public health office is warning that carfentanyl is 10,000 times more potent than morphine and so powerful that even a tiny dose can lead to respiratory failure and death. Health officials say the drug could also be absorbed through the skin. As little as 2 milligrams of carfentanyl can lead to a fatal overdose.
Carfentanyl is so powerful and so fast-acting that it can easily lead to unconsciousness and death because an individual stops breathing. Officials say users may also not realize what they
are taking and may think they are using something else.
We want to let people know that this exists, and that just touching this drug can be dangerous, said Evelyne Boudreau of the Laval police department.
People need to know about this. People need to know that if they think they're buying LSD, that may not be the case.
This is the first time fentanyl has appeared in blotters in the Montreal area, though not in Canada. Last year, Winnipeg police seized six blotters laced with carfentanyl that were designed
to look like childrens tattoos.
It is not for human use, it's like morphine but for elephants, said Boudreau.
The blotters found portray a man riding a bicycle on a green and red background.
https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/dangerou...aval-1.3801420
-----
People are using a $1 test strip to check their drugs for Fentanyl
Anything I put in me, I definitely want to know what is in it, a man, a heroin user in Baltimore once told a researcher. They are dropping like flies on this stuff.
This stuff is fentanyl, an opioid drug 50 times more potent than heroin. It is now the leading cause of fatal overdoses nationwide, killing about two people a day in Baltimore alone.
The man was part of a 3-city study last year in Baltimore, Boston, and Providence, Rhode Island that encouraged users to test their own drugs with a $1 fentanyl test strip that resembles a pregnancy test.
These people are going to be using heroin or other drugs, said one of the studys leaders, Susan Sherman of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, at an April conference in Atlanta. Drug checking allows for them have information about what is in them.
Public health experts nationwide, mostly in big cities, are providing fentanyl test strips to drug users to let them test the drugs for themselves. Intended to test for fentanyl in urine, the strips also work in water mixed with a sample of a drug, revealing one red stripe for the presence of fentanyl and two stripes for none detected.
In the 3-city study, which has not yet been published, investigators first tested the accuracy of the strips in 210 powder and pill drug samples collected on the streets of Baltimore. The strips were far more sensitive, able to detect about fentanyl concentrations 100 times lower than the portable lab devices, the study found.
Then they asked 335 drug users whether they would want to use the strips. Overall, 89% reported fentanyl checking would make them feel more protected, and 84% said they were worried about fentanyl in their drugs. Three-quarters said they did not want fentanyl in their drugs, and many reported using lower doses or not using the drugs if they tested positive.
The real benefit of the strips is starting a discussion about the dangers of street drugs and how users can find addiction treatment, Brandon Marshall of Brown University, who was part of the study team, told BuzzFeed News.
The common idea that street drug users dont care whether they live or die is crazy, said Tino Fuentes, a treatment advocate who has tested bags of street drugs for fentanyl in East Coast cities and frequently gives users the test strips.
Dealers dont know whats in there, either, most of them. They dont want it, he added. They cant make a living by killing off their customers.
In a separate study of 242 drug users in San Francisco, researchers from the Drug Overdose Prevention & Education (DOPE) Project found a similar willingness to use the strips. About 68% of the strips collected in this study tested positive for fentanyl.
Test strips are just one tool to let people know what is out there, and they are a great conversation opener, overdose prevention expert Eliza Wheeler of the Harm Reduction Coalition told Buzzfeed News. The message is that there are strong, powerful drugs out there. So what does that mean for you??
The test strips do have drawbacks. Perhaps most important: They cant tell you how much fentanyl is in a baggie, which determines whether it is a deadly dose or just an incidental contamination.
Another problem is that fentanyl is distributed so spottily throughout the drug supply that even two baggies from the same dealer, with identical labels, can give different test results, Fuentes said. I tell people to always be cautious. Just because you get a negative result doesnt mean it isnt in there.
And although federal law doesnt prevent the sale of fentanyl strips to consumers, state laws in all but eight states: Alaska, Maryland, Nebraska, New York, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming make their sale potentially illegal, Adam Auctor of the Bunk Police, which sells strips to public health groups, told BuzzFeed News by email.
We'll be challenging many of these laws by selling kits that are designed to identify unknown substances for educational purposes this year, come what may, he said. Sales of his companys strips, called FentKits, are skyrocketing worldwide, especially since the New Year, Auctor said. Eastern and Southeastern states, he added, are definitely hotspots.
For now, more studies are needed to see if handing out test strips to drug users would truly help them in the long run, Marshall of Brown told BuzzFeed News. The strip can be confusing two stripes indicating no fentanyl is a counter-intuitive signal that has even confused study researchers at times, he said.
And although three-quarters of drug users seem to want to avoid fentanyl, the rest could use the strips to make sure they get more of it. But Wheeler is skeptical that this is a problem.
We have fentanyl sold as fentanyl here, and people are buying it. At least this way they will know what they are getting, she said.
A tactic borrowed from music festivals and raves, test strips are just one way to deal with one of the outstanding problems of the opioid crisis; people only learn about a fentanyl outbreak after a cluster of deadly overdoses triggers alarm. Turning to tests strips now reflects a deeper need for the authorities to start testing street drugs, and warning people about fentanyl in real time, say experts such as medical epidemiologist Dan Ciccarone of the University of California, San Francisco.
Surveillance is a foundational aspect of public health, Ciccarone told BuzzFeed News. That makes the current lack of information about street drugs in the midst of a historic epidemic of fatal overdoses, with more deaths now than at the height of the AIDS crisis two decades ago, all the more frustrating.
From March to June of 2017, New York health workers collected 271 used heroin needles and found that 1 in 6 was contaminated with fentanyl. Only two of the 46 people who had turned in those contaminated needles were aware they had used fentanyl.
Washington, DCs Department of Forensic Science has tested 75 syringes from overdose cases since January of last year and found 49% containing some form of fentanyl. Only a handful contained heroin, the illicit opioid drug that has plagued cities since the 1960s. The report mirrors the outsize role of fentanyl in the overdose epidemic reported in many states and cities.
A sensible street-drug monitoring system would rely on lab results, not fentanyl strips, Denise Paone of New York Citys Department of Health told BuzzFeed News, but the costs are prohibitive, at $300 a syringe test.
Damn the cost, said Ciccarone, pointing to years of health officials playing catch-up to overdose outbreaks only after people start dying. In his view, cities should start collaborations between crime labs and health departments to immediately test seized drugs and broadcast the results.
Death waves, understandable and preventable, come and go rapidly in the synthetic drug era, said Dennis Cauchon of Harm Reduction Ohio, which monitors overdose trends in that state. That's why Cauchon has complained about late public health warnings of fentanyl turning up in cocaine and methamphetamines, for example. Some warnings were sent to health agencies but withheld from the public. Such contamination, and an outbreak of deaths from carfentanil, an opioid 5,000 times stronger than morphine, seems to have triggered a spike in deaths last year in Ohio, he said.
Crime labs conducted those tests of seized drugs long after their dangerous contaminants had killed people, Cauchon added, too late to warn the public even if they had been broadcast.
Until an early warning system for street drugs arrives, handing out fentanyl test strips to drug users looks like a reasonable step, Fuentes said.
Agencies have all this data but keep it to themselves, and people continue to die, he said. If we can show people what they're using, at the very least we can show them how to use safer.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/danvergano/...EqD#.hugWpRNMG
Health officials in Canada are warning the public about blotters laced with the potentially deadly drug, carfentanyl, a very powerful pain medication. Carfentanyl is 100 times stronger than fentanyl. Police discovered the blotters after a 59-year-old man was found in physical distress and a family member called 911 on Jan 23. He died three days later in hospital. They believe
the blotters also contained LSD and were purchased through an online black market supplier.
Spokesperson Genevieve Major said the carfentanyl discovered in this case is so potent that even touching the substance with uncovered skin can transmit the opioid into a users system. Canada's public health office is warning that carfentanyl is 10,000 times more potent than morphine and so powerful that even a tiny dose can lead to respiratory failure and death. Health officials say the drug could also be absorbed through the skin. As little as 2 milligrams of carfentanyl can lead to a fatal overdose.
Carfentanyl is so powerful and so fast-acting that it can easily lead to unconsciousness and death because an individual stops breathing. Officials say users may also not realize what they
are taking and may think they are using something else.
We want to let people know that this exists, and that just touching this drug can be dangerous, said Evelyne Boudreau of the Laval police department.
People need to know about this. People need to know that if they think they're buying LSD, that may not be the case.
This is the first time fentanyl has appeared in blotters in the Montreal area, though not in Canada. Last year, Winnipeg police seized six blotters laced with carfentanyl that were designed
to look like childrens tattoos.
It is not for human use, it's like morphine but for elephants, said Boudreau.
The blotters found portray a man riding a bicycle on a green and red background.
https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/dangerou...aval-1.3801420
-----
People are using a $1 test strip to check their drugs for Fentanyl
Anything I put in me, I definitely want to know what is in it, a man, a heroin user in Baltimore once told a researcher. They are dropping like flies on this stuff.
This stuff is fentanyl, an opioid drug 50 times more potent than heroin. It is now the leading cause of fatal overdoses nationwide, killing about two people a day in Baltimore alone.
The man was part of a 3-city study last year in Baltimore, Boston, and Providence, Rhode Island that encouraged users to test their own drugs with a $1 fentanyl test strip that resembles a pregnancy test.
These people are going to be using heroin or other drugs, said one of the studys leaders, Susan Sherman of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, at an April conference in Atlanta. Drug checking allows for them have information about what is in them.
Public health experts nationwide, mostly in big cities, are providing fentanyl test strips to drug users to let them test the drugs for themselves. Intended to test for fentanyl in urine, the strips also work in water mixed with a sample of a drug, revealing one red stripe for the presence of fentanyl and two stripes for none detected.
In the 3-city study, which has not yet been published, investigators first tested the accuracy of the strips in 210 powder and pill drug samples collected on the streets of Baltimore. The strips were far more sensitive, able to detect about fentanyl concentrations 100 times lower than the portable lab devices, the study found.
Then they asked 335 drug users whether they would want to use the strips. Overall, 89% reported fentanyl checking would make them feel more protected, and 84% said they were worried about fentanyl in their drugs. Three-quarters said they did not want fentanyl in their drugs, and many reported using lower doses or not using the drugs if they tested positive.
The real benefit of the strips is starting a discussion about the dangers of street drugs and how users can find addiction treatment, Brandon Marshall of Brown University, who was part of the study team, told BuzzFeed News.
The common idea that street drug users dont care whether they live or die is crazy, said Tino Fuentes, a treatment advocate who has tested bags of street drugs for fentanyl in East Coast cities and frequently gives users the test strips.
Dealers dont know whats in there, either, most of them. They dont want it, he added. They cant make a living by killing off their customers.
In a separate study of 242 drug users in San Francisco, researchers from the Drug Overdose Prevention & Education (DOPE) Project found a similar willingness to use the strips. About 68% of the strips collected in this study tested positive for fentanyl.
Test strips are just one tool to let people know what is out there, and they are a great conversation opener, overdose prevention expert Eliza Wheeler of the Harm Reduction Coalition told Buzzfeed News. The message is that there are strong, powerful drugs out there. So what does that mean for you??
The test strips do have drawbacks. Perhaps most important: They cant tell you how much fentanyl is in a baggie, which determines whether it is a deadly dose or just an incidental contamination.
Another problem is that fentanyl is distributed so spottily throughout the drug supply that even two baggies from the same dealer, with identical labels, can give different test results, Fuentes said. I tell people to always be cautious. Just because you get a negative result doesnt mean it isnt in there.
And although federal law doesnt prevent the sale of fentanyl strips to consumers, state laws in all but eight states: Alaska, Maryland, Nebraska, New York, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming make their sale potentially illegal, Adam Auctor of the Bunk Police, which sells strips to public health groups, told BuzzFeed News by email.
We'll be challenging many of these laws by selling kits that are designed to identify unknown substances for educational purposes this year, come what may, he said. Sales of his companys strips, called FentKits, are skyrocketing worldwide, especially since the New Year, Auctor said. Eastern and Southeastern states, he added, are definitely hotspots.
For now, more studies are needed to see if handing out test strips to drug users would truly help them in the long run, Marshall of Brown told BuzzFeed News. The strip can be confusing two stripes indicating no fentanyl is a counter-intuitive signal that has even confused study researchers at times, he said.
And although three-quarters of drug users seem to want to avoid fentanyl, the rest could use the strips to make sure they get more of it. But Wheeler is skeptical that this is a problem.
We have fentanyl sold as fentanyl here, and people are buying it. At least this way they will know what they are getting, she said.
A tactic borrowed from music festivals and raves, test strips are just one way to deal with one of the outstanding problems of the opioid crisis; people only learn about a fentanyl outbreak after a cluster of deadly overdoses triggers alarm. Turning to tests strips now reflects a deeper need for the authorities to start testing street drugs, and warning people about fentanyl in real time, say experts such as medical epidemiologist Dan Ciccarone of the University of California, San Francisco.
Surveillance is a foundational aspect of public health, Ciccarone told BuzzFeed News. That makes the current lack of information about street drugs in the midst of a historic epidemic of fatal overdoses, with more deaths now than at the height of the AIDS crisis two decades ago, all the more frustrating.
From March to June of 2017, New York health workers collected 271 used heroin needles and found that 1 in 6 was contaminated with fentanyl. Only two of the 46 people who had turned in those contaminated needles were aware they had used fentanyl.
Washington, DCs Department of Forensic Science has tested 75 syringes from overdose cases since January of last year and found 49% containing some form of fentanyl. Only a handful contained heroin, the illicit opioid drug that has plagued cities since the 1960s. The report mirrors the outsize role of fentanyl in the overdose epidemic reported in many states and cities.
A sensible street-drug monitoring system would rely on lab results, not fentanyl strips, Denise Paone of New York Citys Department of Health told BuzzFeed News, but the costs are prohibitive, at $300 a syringe test.
Damn the cost, said Ciccarone, pointing to years of health officials playing catch-up to overdose outbreaks only after people start dying. In his view, cities should start collaborations between crime labs and health departments to immediately test seized drugs and broadcast the results.
Death waves, understandable and preventable, come and go rapidly in the synthetic drug era, said Dennis Cauchon of Harm Reduction Ohio, which monitors overdose trends in that state. That's why Cauchon has complained about late public health warnings of fentanyl turning up in cocaine and methamphetamines, for example. Some warnings were sent to health agencies but withheld from the public. Such contamination, and an outbreak of deaths from carfentanil, an opioid 5,000 times stronger than morphine, seems to have triggered a spike in deaths last year in Ohio, he said.
Crime labs conducted those tests of seized drugs long after their dangerous contaminants had killed people, Cauchon added, too late to warn the public even if they had been broadcast.
Until an early warning system for street drugs arrives, handing out fentanyl test strips to drug users looks like a reasonable step, Fuentes said.
Agencies have all this data but keep it to themselves, and people continue to die, he said. If we can show people what they're using, at the very least we can show them how to use safer.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/danvergano/...EqD#.hugWpRNMG
Last edited:
