Elephant Sedative Could Soon Be Deadly Alternative to Heroin for Drug Addicts
Law enforcement officials and medical experts across the US are growing increasingly worried about reports of drug addicts using elephant sedatives to feed their addictions. According to authorities, people who are hooked on heroin and prescription opioids are seeking out alternatives in order to get high – and what they are finding is that a drug typically used to sedate large animals is sometimes very easy to get hold of.
Carfentanil, an elephant sedative, is a popular drug for someone looking to get high because it is extremely powerful. According to some estimates, the drug is 100 times as potent as fentanyl, a prescription painkiller used to treat cancer patients suffering from chronic pain.
Police in states like New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio are concerned about a rash of drug overdoses in recent months. Law enforcement believes that extremely powerful prescription painkillers like fentanyl are being passed off as heroin to unsuspecting addicts, which can lead to drug overdose deaths. Now police also have to worry about carfentanil, which could result in even higher number of OD victims. The difficulties faced by law enforcement were highlighted by Joseph Pinjuh, the thief of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force and narcotics unit for the US attorney in Cleveland, Ohio. Pinjuh said that every time government officials, police officers, prosecutors, and medical experts began to figure out how to stop drug addicts from gaining access to one type of drug, “another seems to pop up.”
The story on carfentanil is a new one. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), carfentanil can be purchased over the Internet from Chinese companies. The easy ability of drug addicts to gain access to the powerful elephant sedative could soon make it a popular – and potentially deadly – alternative to drugs like heroin and fentanyl.
For more information, view the The San Diego Union-Tribune article, “Elephant Sedative Emerges as New Threat in Overdose Battle.”
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