New Fentanyl-Laced Pills Killing Street Drug Buyers- Get Help for Addiction Today

New Fentanyl-Laced Pills Killing Street Drug Buyers: Get Help for Addiction Today
By Janie Diaz
It’s a sad enough reality to feel like you’re losing someone you love to drug and/or alcohol addiction.
But when that addiction turns a person to a drug dealer who is selling opiate painkillers,
antidepressants, heroin, Xanax, ecstasy, and other drugs laced with lethal doses of fentanyl, the loss is
no longer figurative — it is fatal, surreal, and permanent. The sad truth is, the new trend in street drugs
laces with fentanyl is not faltering in any way. Night after night on the news, interviews with the
mothers and fathers, children, grandparents, and others who knew a person who died from taking one
single pill — because it contained fentanyl.
What is the Purpose of Adding Fentanyl to “Everyday” Opiates and Other Street Drugs?
As to why any drug dealer or cartel would add fentanyl to other, less expensive drugs, there are no
clear-cut answers. What can be said with all certainty is this: any time people take their chances by
purchasing drugs on the street or online through a dealer on the dark Web or the on corner, they are
taking their lives into their own hands. People who take heroin, morphine, ketamine, Xanax, or
codeine, among other drugs, don’t often know: Fentanyl is 100 times stronger than morphine: think
about that! If you’ve ever had morphine at the hospital, or you happen to be addicted to morphine
yourself, try to imagine a drug that is one hundred times as strong, and the effects that will have on
someone who has never taken this drug before, which is nearly always the case with fentanyl laced pill
fatalities.
Where Fentanyl Coming from and Which Organizations are in the Loop

Currently, the DEA and FBI are tracing the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., and what they’re finding, by
and large, is that fentanyl, or a similar chemical on the molecular level, is being shipped in mass
quantities from China to Mexico, where it is either added to “pressed pills” (these are pills that are not
pharmaceutical grade, but that are homemade using the same or similar compounds found in
authentic versions of these medications). In other cases, the similar compound, which doesn’t come
from China as fentanyl but as something similar, is altered in underground Mexican labs, where it
becomes fentanyl, and is then added to pills like hydrocodone, oxycodone, OxyContin,
hydromorphone, oxymorphone, morphine, and others.
Why this is Happening—a More Addictive Substance Means More Profit for Dealers
The drug dealers and cartels of Mexico, China, the U.S., and around the world are not interested in
who lives or dies — but they definitely have a vested interest in the drug addicts who survive the
fentanyl laced pills and become hooked. While these instances may seem rare based on what is shown
on the news, some of the underground entities lacing pills with fentanyl are doing so in lower doses.
The effect, sadly, is that without even knowing it, a person addicted to something like oxycodone
becomes addicted to the fentanyl, entirely unaware the substance is even in the oxycodone they’re
taking. It isn’t until they go to a different drug dealer and purchase what they think is the same product
that they realize they’ve become addicted to something far more dangerous and far more addictive.
The Dangers of Fentanyl for the Average Person, Including Everyday Drug Users
Because it is so incredibly strong, fentanyl will tragically kill many people in the underground drug
industry’s attempt to garner a new line of addicts. For those it does not kill, fentanyl creates a living
hell: dealers hike the cost of the pills that addicts must now have to keep from withdrawal symptoms.
What’s worse, there’s no guarantee the fentanyl being used to lace these other street drugs is in
anyway pure; in fact, it is usually cut with any number of products that would typically not be
considered “not for human consumption,” furthering endangering the life of the addict.
Even for those with the highest heroin, morphine, Opana (oxymorphone) or OxyContin tolerance,
fentanyl is so much stronger that its likelihood for fatality is unrivaled by any other drug on the street
today. There was once a time when heroin was called “China White” — the new China White is
fentanyl, and it will absolutely kill in a flash. It does this by shutting down the organs of the body
slowly, and most who die from overdose do so via suffocation, as their respiratory system becomes so
depressed they cannot breathe. In some, the passing is uneventful — for others, it is a state of hell in
which they are conscious and can feel all the pain the fentanyl is causing, just before it shuts down the
lungs.