United States: Selective lab tests of the counterfeit Oxycodone (Oxycontin) pills seized by the police force in Rhode Island in 2022 showed that they contained 99.8 percent dangerous fentanyl.
More about the recovered drug
It was additively mixed with xylazine, another potentially kind of drug that is also lethal. Both drugs place the risk of overdosing more likely and the prospect of those overdoses causing death higher, according to the experts.
Dr. Rachel Wightman, associate professor of epidemiology and emergency medicine at Brown University in Providence, RI, said, “Counterfeit prescription pills have been associated with adverse outcomes, including fatal overdose,” as many US families have now come to know about it, as US News reported.
The findings of the study done by Wightman’s team were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on May 6.
About illicit prescription opioids
The manufacturers of illegal fake prescription opioids, amphetamines, and tranquilizers have added fentanyl to their pills for quite a long time, and recently, they also started to put xylazine in their pills as well.
Fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine and so 50 percent more deadly than heroin, and it is growing ever to blame for the overdose and death of adults who are addicted to opioids or those who abuse recreational pills.
Along with the continuing spike in overdose fatalities caused by illicit pills containing xylazine, a horse tranquilizer, an equally concerning pattern is emerging. Results of a survey that came out during the summer of last year say that the number of US xylazine overdose mortality increased from about 102 in 2018 to 3468 in 2021.
In their report, Wightman and team processed 1,176 test results for the drug chemicals recovered by law enforcement agencies from counterfeit drugs in Rhode Island from early 2017 to December 31, 2022, as US News reported.
The researchers noted, “The number of pills obtained during seizure incidents range from a single pill to thousands,” and “Any pill that yielded a result other than the expected active ingredients as marked was considered counterfeit.”
The stock of counterfeit pills belongs to three groups, which are Oxycodone (686 pills), alprazolam (brand name Xanax, 312 pills), and amphetamines (174 pills).
What do the lab results show?
Lab analysis shows that nearly all counterfeit oxycodone pills collected from the 2022 episode had fentanyl. From 2017 to 2020, the percentage found in the illicit drug revealed a rising trend.
The test result showed a rising trend from 2017 and 2019, where almost 2.6 percent of fake Xanax pills had found to contain lethal dose of fentanyl.