New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shown what officials feared to be true; fentanyl has just about become the singular driving force in the recent increase in drug overdoses.
Dr. Sharon Levy, the director of the adolescent substance abuse & addiction program at Boston Children’s Hospital, talked with KNX Radio about the drug and how it’s taken so many lives.
Levy shared that part of the reason why fentanyl has become so deadly is its contamination of other drugs, which results in users being unaware they are even taking the substance.
“The drug supply has become increasingly more contaminated, and that’s true whether you’re looking at illicit substances like cocaine or looking at these counterfeit pills that look similar, even identical, to pharmaceutical products but are also cut with… fentanyl,” Levy shared.
The CDC’s data showed that the biggest increase in overdose deaths from 2011 to 2021 came from the mixture of cocaine and opioids; almost 80% of overdose deaths tied to cocaine use also involved the use of opioids, and the same was true for the mixture of methamphetamines and fentanyl.
“Fentanyl is contaminating the drug supply, and almost any substance that is not coming from a pharmacy is at risk of being contaminated with fentanyl,” Levy said.
When it comes to those using drugs cut with fentanyl, the question arises whether or not it’s the mixture of both narcotics or only the opioid that plays a role in the user’s death.
Levy says that “primarily” the cause of death tends to be respiratory suppression caused by fentanyl.
“Cocaine is a stimulant. So usually when people die from [only] cocaine use, it’s from a cardiac cause, something like having a heart attack,” Levy said.
For those worried about drug transactions and getting narcotics that are not contaminated with fentanyl, Levy says the risk will always be there, and people should be worried about their drugs being contaminated with the opioid.
“I think that people should assume that any… illicit drug or any medication that looks like prescription medication but isn’t coming from a pharmacy, they should assume that those are going to be contaminated with fentanyl,” Levy said.
Levy says the most worrying part of the data and the current world of drugs is the added risk of opioid overdose to people who don’t suffer from opioid use disorder, a chronic disorder that sees users become addicted and dependent on the substances.
“What’s kind of shocking now is we have people who don’t have opioid use disorder who are suddenly overdosing because they were accidentally exposed. They thought they were taking something else or they were exposed through some other pathway,” Levy said. “And so, actually, in some ways, it makes the overdose problem a little bit more complicated because there are just so many more people at risk of overdose than people with opioid use disorder.”
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