Fentanyl Crisis: Columbus, Ohio Has One Fatal Overdose Per Day
The drug that killed Prince is slaying people at a rate of nearly one a day in Ohio's capital city.
Fentanyl has already figured in 55 fatal drug overdoses in Columbus and surrounding Franklin County in January and February, the local coroner reported Friday.
"The headline is that this is almost half the total number of fentanyl-related deaths we logged all of last year," Franklin County Coroner spokeswoman Tia Moretti told NBC News.
And at this "unprecedented" rate, Moretti said, Columbus is poised to rip up the local record book as a drug that has cut like a scythe through much of Ohio wreaks havoc on the buckle of the Buckeye State.
"This is killing us," Moretti said.
Fentanyl is a powerful painkiller that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says is 25 to 50 times more powerful than heroin and packs 50 to 100 times more punch than morphine.
One of the strongest opiates on the market, it's often prescribed post-surgery and it is so addictive it turns normally law-abiding people into criminals who will do almost anything to score more.
Typically, dealers cut heroin with fentanyl to boost profits and give it more kick. But more and more, investigators are finding it in marijuana and other drugs, Moretti said.
"What we do know is we are seeing more and more mixing drugs with fentanyl, even if the drug of choice might not be an opiate," she said. "Some people are even taking it straight. The problem is you can order it online. It's so much more potent."
Moretti spoke out after the Franklin County Opiate Crisis Task Force met to come up with a strategy to combat a plague that has ripped across much of the Rust Belt. The group is expected to come up with recommendations in about a month.
"We're not running out of space for bodies, but what's happening here is happening all over Ohio," she said.
Is it ever. The drug overdose rate in Ohio was 29.9 per 100,000 people in 2015, the most recent federal figures available.
This week, NBC reported that in Stark County the local coroner had a " cold storage mass casualty trailer " trucked up from Columbus to store bodies after they ran out of space in their morgue. Nearly half of those bodies were drug overdose victims.
The chief culprit in Stark County appears to be a tranquilizer called carfentanil that is 100 times more potent than fentanyl and used to sedate big animals like elephants and tigers.
Coroners in the counties of Ashtabula, Cuyahoga (where Cleveland is located) and Summit (where Akron is located) have also had to resort to storing bodies in trailers because their morgues were too jammed.
Sadly, Ohio is not alone in dealing with a deadly opiate epidemic.
West Virginia, New Hampshire and Kentucky have even higher drug overdose death rates, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
And cities like Wilkes-Barre , Pennsylvania saw an explosion in the number of deadly overdoses after drug dealers began peddling heroin cut with fentanyl.
Prince died last April of an accidental overdose of fentanyl. He was being treated at the time for opioid withdrawal, NBC reported .
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fentanyl-crisis-columbus-ohio-has-one-fatal-overdose-day-n734996
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I had a colonoscopy a few weeks ago and I remember they gave me some Valium IV to calm me down and then moved me into the operating room. I remember the Nurse coming toward the IV port in the back of my left hand (they couldn't find a vein in my arm) with two IV style injector syringes. I remember saying something like here comes the good stuff and her repeating it back to me and then the next thing I remember is waking up in the recover room wondering when they were going to start the procedure. The "good stuff" was Fentanyl being used properly.
I also remember when I lived in L.A. that I had 4 per-rectal Abscesses' and yes that is as gross and painful as they sound. Basically they are golf ball size boils in a very uncomfortable place and they need to be lanced and drained. Finally one of them turned into a fistula and required regular surgery, but the other four times they used a smaller amount of Fentanyl to make me somnolent for the lancing and draining. During those times I could see where a person could get addicted to it. I had had Morphine many years ago, but this was many times better! I felt wonderful! I was on a cloud! Not a single thing in the world could bother me! I actually laughed when the doctor lanced my abscess and I could feel the rush of blood and pus! When he inserted the drain I was feeling nothing but happiness! I was bandaged up (strange how they bandaged you down there) and my wife drove me home and the first thing I did was to turn on the stereo and put Santana on and sing along! I was so damned high! After awhile the Fentanyl wore off and I was introduced to Oxycodone which had a dangerous high of it's own.
I think that what I am trying to say is that it is easy to blame people who gt addicted to these drugs and then move on to Heroin, especially if you have never experienced the effects of the legal drugs. The legal drugs, when handled right, such as later during and after my kidney surgery, are fantastic. Thy relieve pain and discomfort and make surgeries more then tolerable. But it is hard not to want more of these drugs. In addition to relieving the pain they make you feel so good, so fine, so at peace with yourself and the world in ways you never felt before and trust me, I have tried many illegal drugs and they didn't come close.
The addiction crisis is real and needs to be dealt with, but not by cutting funding for rehabilitation like the current federal budget does. Most of the people who are addicts could not help themselves. These drugs are very, very powerful and unless you have experienced them yourself you can never understand the siren song of them. Today's addicts who became addicted are not like those who experimented with various drugs for other reasons. They are true victims and they need our help.
That was one of the grossest things I've ever read. Lol.
I remember getting a morphine injection for a dislocated hip many years ago. It was like a warm, comfy mass that I could feel passing from the top of my head down to my feet. I had never used opiates but I had used other drugs back then. The experience was valuable in that it taught me to never touch opiates for recreation. The potential for addiction is too high.
The U.S. leader of the free world...Yeah sure, more like a drugged nation stumbling along.
Unfortunately like most social, economic, political issues, the U.S. closes the barn door, after the horse gets out. I do not know the solution, more public school education about the dangers of drugs. Stronger oversight and penalties on Drs., pharmacies and producers of these drugs. Personally, I think anyone who sells drugs to anyone, with the intent to get them addicted, or to keep them addicted while earning money or profit should be stood against the wall and shot. One 9mm between the eyes = $.50 cents. No court costs, guilty as charged sentence carried out. After all, if you were walking down the street, and you stepped in dog shit, you would scrape it off your shoe, rather than continue on with it. Wouldn't you? And don't give me any shit about constitutional rights of drug dealers. They are the scum of the earth.
One of the things we need to do is to charge the doctors who over prescribe these drugs with the deaths of those who overdose on them. It has already happened in Los Angeles.