image by: Jeff Anderson

HWN Suggests

Fentanyl Tainted Pills Bought on Social Media Cause Youth Drug Deaths to Soar

Teenagers and young adults are turning to Snapchat, TikTok and other social media apps to find Percocet, Xanax and other pills. The vast majority are laced with deadly doses of fentanyl...

Supplies of tainted pills, crudely pressed by Mexican cartels with chemicals from China and India, have escalated commensurately. Fentanyl, faster and cheaper to produce than heroin and 50 times as potent, made for a highly addictive filler.

read full article

Featured

  What Would You Fight For?

Fighting to combat the opioid crisis.

 How the fentanyl crisis' fourth wave has hit every corner of the US

"The rise of illicitly manufactured fentanyl has ushered in an overdose crisis in the United States of unprecedented magnitude," the study's authors wrote. Virtually every corner of the US, from Hawaii to Alaska to Rhode Island, has been touched by fentanyl.

 The latest college campus freebies? Naloxone and fentanyl test strips

Test strips and naloxone are becoming more and more common on college campuses, and at least one health department has recommended they be added to school packing lists. For students who didn't bring their own, many campuses are handing them out at welcome fairs, orientation events or campus health centers.

 ‘It’s devastating’: how fentanyl is unfolding as one of America’s greatest tragedies

More than 100,000 people died from overdoses in a single year – driven primarily by one drug

Articles of Interest

Fentanyl’s New Foe: A Quick Test Strip That Can Prevent Overdoses

Heroin and cocaine users rely on the strip to see if their drugs have been contaminated with the synthetic opioid, but the practice has encountered opposition.

Fentanyl: One Pill Kills

Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Just 2 milligrams of fentanyl, equal to 10 to15 grains of table salt, is considered a lethal dose. Illegally manufactured fentanyl is found in heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and in counterfeit pills. As a result, many people may not know they're ingesting fentanyl, leading to an accidental poisoning.

Fentanyl Testing to Prevent Overdose

Fentanyl test strips (‘FTS’) are a form of inexpensive drug testing technology that was originally developed for urinalysis, but which have been shown to be effective at detecting the presence of fentanyl and fentanyl-analogs in drug samples prior to ingestion.

Hooked: One Family’s Ordeal With Fentanyl

This deadly synthetic painkiller, up to 50 times as powerful as heroin, presents a new level of peril in America’s opioid crisis.

I was addicted to fentanyl. Here's what we should be doing about it.

A former fentanyl addict writes about her experiences and the policies she believes will best help others.

Sending Your Kid to College? Send Them With Fentanyl Testing Strips and Naloxone

Think of them as an essential harm-reduction tool, like condoms.

‘Historically tragic’: why are drug overdoses rising among Black and Indigenous Americans?

The staggering increase highlights the shifting dynamics and focus of the opioid crisis, long considered a white, rural issue.

A High-Tech Strategy for Keeping Drug Users Safe: Analyzing Their Fentanyl

Machines that examine samples of drugs can cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, but experts say they are an increasingly vital tool in stemming overdoses.

As Fentanyl Overdoses Rise, How to Keep Loved Ones Safe

Drug overdoses have reached record highs. Experts offer tips to talk about opioids with your family.

Dark web dealers voluntarily ban deadly fentanyl

Suppliers, fearing police crackdown, decide opioid is too high-risk to trade.

Doctors have been overprescribing fentanyl for years and the FDA hasn't been able to stop it

A new report shows up to half of potent fentanyl prescriptions were given inappropriately.

Fentanyl Drug Finds New Home in First Opioid Crisis Bankruptcy Deal

A bankruptcy judge approved the sale of Insys’s Subsys, with restrictions on how the drug is prescribed.

Fentanyl Is Stronger Than Any Opioid And It's Killing Casual Drug Users

Over a hundred times stronger than heroin, Fentanyl offers a high that's hard to come back from.

Fentanyl: The king of all opiates, and a killer drug crisis

It’s stronger than heroin and more potent than OxyContin. It’s also cheap, ubiquitous, and incredibly deadly. Inside the rise of fentanyl.

Heroin Epidemic Is Yielding to a Deadlier Cousin: Fentanyl

Fentanyl, which looks like heroin, is a powerful synthetic painkiller that has been laced into heroin but is increasingly being sold by itself — often without the user’s knowledge.

How fentanyl became America’s leading cause of overdose deaths

Fentanyl and its analogs are appearing across America, making the US’s deadliest drug overdose crisis ever even worse.

How Fentanyl Changes The Opioid Equation

Almost half of the nearly 200 U.S. drug overdose deaths every day involve fentanyl.

How fentanyl is making deadly drugs even deadlier

But it'll take more than a touch to overdose.

Illicit Version Of Painkiller Fentanyl Makes Heroin Deadlier

Regional drug dealers add the illicit form of fentanyl to the heroin they sell in hopes of restoring the potency of a product that's been diluted by dealers higher up the distribution chain.

In Cities Where It Once Reigned, Heroin Is Disappearing

The diminishing supply should be a victory for public health and law enforcement alike. Instead, in cities like Baltimore, longtime users who managed to survive decades injecting heroin are now at far higher risk of dying from an overdose. That is because synthetic fentanyl, a deadlier drug that is much cheaper to produce and distribute than heroin, has all but replaced it. The dramatic rise of fentanyl, which can be 50 times stronger than heroin, has been well documented.

Inside Fentanyl’s Mounting Death Toll: ‘This Is Poison’

While a rise in overdose deaths shows the devastating consequences of the opioid’s spread, less is understood about how the drug has proliferated.

Keeping Fentanyl Out of the US Will Take More Than a Wall

Unlike heroin (derived from poppies), cocaine (processed from coca leaves), or methamphetamine (cooked in garage-sized labs), producing fentanyl and its deadlier analogs pretty much requires a graduate degree in illicit chemistry. “They are fairly sophisticated clandestine laboratory processes, more complicated than methamphetamine, and require some degree of chemistry knowledge...

Most Drug Overdose Patients Not Tested for Fentanyl, Synthetic Opioids

New research suggests that only 5 percent of US drug overdose patients are tested for synthetic opioids, the leading killer of adults under 45, in the emergency room.

New data shows that Fentanyl kills more people than heroin

Just five years ago, fentanyl was one of the least common drugs to overdose on. Now it's surpassed heroin as the number one.

Opioid Hysteria Comes to Massachusetts Courts

This false belief about the danger of these drugs seems to stem from several unsubstantiated — though widely disseminated — media reports over the past year.

The Brazen Way a Chinese Company Pumped Fentanyl Ingredients Into the U.S.

Yuancheng used an army of young, perky salespeople to peddle illegal chemicals to Americans.

The China Connection: How One D.E.A. Agent Cracked a Global Fentanyl Ring

Fentanyl is quickly becoming America’s deadliest drug. But law enforcement couldn’t trace it to its source — until one teenager overdosed in North Dakota.

The Fentanyl Crisis

From porches and shacks within their remote strongholds, Mexico’s Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels maintain a network of laboratories to make fentanyl, which is killing more Americans than ever. They import chemicals from China to mix in the labs for export across the porous U.S. border.

The Tragic Rise of Fentanyl, Mapped

In just a few years, illicit fentanyl has pushed America’s drug fatalities to a record, reaching into every corner and demographic group in the country.

The U.S. Has A Fentanyl Shortage ... In The Clinic, Not On The Streets

I hope that my doctor doesn't require their patients to bring their own fentanyl.

Touching Fentanyl Is Not Dangerous. Will This Video Finally Prove That?

The rumors swirling that you can overdose just by touching the powder are untrue, and prevent people from getting the critical help they need.