Prescription Drug Abuse causes Death Wisconsin Small Town
A small town man and woman overdose on prescription Fentanyl leave the man dead and the woman in the hospital.
By DAILY PRESS STAFF
Published:
A 43-year-old man died Friday from an overdose of the prescription drug Fentanyl, and a 20-year-old woman also overdosed but was revived, an official said Monday.
According to Det. Jerry Katchka of the Ashland Police Department, the man and woman cut up a patch of the drug, which is a synthetic opiate much stronger than morphine. While one patch is supposed to last 72 hours for one person, the two people apparently cut the patch in half and chewed it, releasing all of the narcotic at once, Katchka said. The two were in a house with other friends on the 1000 block of Sixth Street West, Katchka said. When the woman 
collapsed, friends called her mother, who came to the house and immediately called paramedics at approximately 1:30 p.m. Friday. She was taken to the hospital and revived.
However, the man had ventured into a second room of the home and was not found at the same time as the woman. The second call on the man’s behalf was made approximately a half-hour later at 2 p.m. Friday. Emergency medical staff attempted, but were unable, to revive the man and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Officer Katchka said it was the third Fentanyl-related death in Ashland since 2003.
NEW VERSION, LESS ADDICTIVE A new Fentanyl product has just been approved by the FDA for breakthrough cancer pain called Onsolis. It uses a new drug delivery technology called BEMA (fentanyl buccal soluble film) which is placed in the mouth on a small disc. There appears to be less of a abuse potential because the drug can not be crushed up and snorted like other Fentanyl product. It also has less of a chance of causing mouth ulcers for patients needing to use Fentanyl for breakthrough cancer pain.
Illicit use of pharmaceutical fentanyls first appeared in the mid-1970s in the medical community and continues in the present. United States authorities classify fentanyl as a narcotic. To date, over 12 different analogues of fentanyl have been produced clandestinely and identified in the U.S. drug traffic. The biological effects of the fentanyls are similar to those of heroin, with the exception that many users report a noticeably less euphoric ‘high’ associated with the drug and stronger sedative and analgesic effects.
Because the effects of fentanyl last for only a very short time, it is even more addictive than heroin, and regular users may become addicted very quickly. Additionally, fentanyl may be hundreds of times more potent than street heroin, and tends to produce significantly worse respiratory depression, making it somewhat more dangerous than heroin to users. Fentanyl is most commonly used orally, but like heroin, can also be smoked, snorted or injected. Fentanyl is sometimes sold as heroin, often leading to overdoses. Many fentanyl overdoses are initially classified as heroin overdoses.
Fentanyl is normally sold on the black market in the form of transdermal fentanyl patches such as Duragesic, diverted from legitimate medical supplies. The patches may be cut up and eaten, or the gel from inside the patch smoked. To prevent the removal of the fentanyl base, Janssen-Cilag, the inventor of the Fentanyl patch, designed the Durogesic patch. The Durogesic patches contain their fentanyl throughout the plastic matrix instead of gel incorporated into a reservoir on the patch. Manufacturers such as Mylan have also produced Durogesic-style fentanyl patches that contain the chemical in a silicone matrix, preventing the removal of the fentanyl-containing gel present in other products.
However, the plastic matrix makes the patches far more suitable to transbuccal use and far easier to use illicitly than its gel filled counterpart. Another dosage form of fentanyl that has appeared on the streets are the Actiq fentanyl lollipops, which are sold under the street name of "percopop". The pharmacy retail price ranges from US$10 to US$30 per unit (based on strength of lozenge), with the black market cost anywhere from US$15 to US$40 per unit, depending on the strength.
Non-medical use of fentanyl by individuals without opiate tolerance can be very dangerous and has resulted in numerous deaths. Even those with opiate tolerances are at high risk for overdoses. Once the fentanyl is in the user’s system it is extremely difficult to stop its course because of the nature of absorption. Illicitly synthesized fentanyl powder has also appeared on the US market. Because of the extremely high strength of pure fentanyl powder, it is very difficult to dilute appropriately, and often the resulting mixture may be far too strong and consequently very dangerous.
Some heroin dealers mix fentanyl powder with heroin in order to increase potency or compensate for low-quality heroin. In 2006, illegally manufactured, non-pharmaceutical fentanyl often mixed with cocaine or heroin caused an outbreak of overdose deaths in the United States, heavily concentrated in the cities of Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia. Baltimore, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Camden, New Jersey,Little Rock, and Dallas were also affected. The mixture of fentanyl and heroin is known as "magic" or "the bomb", among other names, on the street.
Several large quantities of illicitly produced fentanyl have been seized by U.S. law enforcement agencies. In June 2006, 945 grams of 83% pure fentanyl powder was seized by Border Patrol agents in California from a vehicle which had entered from Mexico. Mexico is the source of much of the illicit fentanyl for sale in the U.S. However, there has been one domestic fentanyl lab discovered by law enforcement, in April 2006 in Azusa, California. The lab was a source of counterfeit 80-mg OxyContin tablets containing fentanyl instead of oxycodone, as well as bulk fentanyl and other drugs.
The "China White" form of fentanyl refers to any of a number of clandestinely produced analogues, especially α-methylfentanyl (AMF), which today are classified as Schedule I drugs in the United States. Part of the motivation for AMF is that despite the extra difficulty from a synthetic standpoint, the resultant drug is relatively more resistant to metabolic degradation. This results in a drug with an increased duration.
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