GRAND RAPIDS (WKZO-AM) — There has been a report, but its only speculation at this point that the incredibly potent sedative carfentenil was in a dose of heroin that killed a female addict in Kent County earlier this month.
Two other drug samples are being tested but results are not yet back.
The DEA has now joined the list of agencies, including many local police departments and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, who say its become a risk to human life.
Western Michigan University’s expert on substance abuse, Dr. C. Dennis Simpson, said it’s not just dangerous for a human to ingest this drug, it’s dangerous to be anywhere near it.
“This is not just people being harmed short term,” Simpson said. “They are dying in very rapid fashion.”
“Unless you would administer a drug called Naloxone, also known as Narcan, which the police now carry, on an immediate basis, you’re probably going to have severe respiratory depression, severe cardiac depression, and the person is going to die if they’re taking Carfentanil with heroin, because heroin and Carfentanil are synergistic,” Simpson said.
Two milligrams of Carfentenil will sedate an elephant and ten milligrams will kill an elephant.
“It was never meant to be taken by humans,” Simpson said.
Simpson said it was refined back in the 1990s strictly as a drug for use on large animals, like elephants.
In the four counties where it has been confirmed in Ohio, Kentucky, Florida and Indiana, there were bursts of at least a dozen to two-dozen overdoses within hours. That was not the case in Kent County, so it may or may not have made it to west Michigan.
Area police and medical officials are monitoring it closely just in case, because if it does turn up in the local heroin supply, it will be important to act swiftly to save lives.
A spike in overdoses due to heroin and prescription drug abuse had justice officials from all over the U.S. speaking out on Friday, saying long term their best hope to curbing heroin additions starts in the home, with parents working hard to keep their children from starting with alcohol and gateway drugs.
West Michigan U.S. Attorney Pat Miles said it’s rarely been more dangerous to be an addict because of drugs like carfentenil and its less potent form, Fentanyl.
“Fentanyl is 100 times more powerful than morphine and carfentenil, is ten-thousand times more potent then Morphine,” Miles said.
Miles said it can start with alcohol as a teenager and then to more potent substances. Miles said federal statistics show that people who are abusing prescription pain-killers are 40-times more likely to get addicted to heroin.
It’s all part of National Opioid Abuse Week, and a nationwide effort to curb what is killing more and more people every year.
