Tag: opioid epidemic

‘Gas Station Heroin’ Is Causing Intense Withdrawals. It’s Legal in Most States.

A drug called tianeptine, known colloquially as “gas station heroin,” has been banned by several states. It’s being marketed as a dietary supplement, but some users are describing it as a highly addictive opioid. 

Tianeptine is a tricyclic antidepressant used to treat depression in some European, Latin American, and Asian countries, but it’s not approved by the FDA for medical use in the U.S. It’s not a controlled substance and is typically sold in the U.S. as a dietary supplement, nootropic (a chemical that improves cognitive function), or a research chemical under brand names like ZaZa Red, TD Red, and Tianna. It can be found in gas stations or easily bought online. 

Medical experts say tianeptine functions as an opioid because it hits opioid receptors in the brain, which explains why people have reported severe withdrawal when they try to stop using it. 

“People are using it either to manage or withdrawal from harder, harsher stuff, or they’re kind of starting their journey and developing an unhealthy relationship with it based on its effects—and its effects are opioid-like effects,” said Dr. Patrick Marshalek, an associate professor at West Virginia University’s School of Medicine. 

There’s very little known about tianeptine, including how many people are using it, though reports from both the FDA and the DEA have noted upticks in poison control calls about the drug up until at least 2020. It’s been banned in Michigan, Alabama, Minnesota, Tennessee, Georgia, and Indiana; officials in Mississippi issued a health alert about it earlier this year. 

Experts told VICE News the issues surrounding its use are part of a larger problem where unregulated substances mimic the effects of illicit drugs, despite being marketed in a benign way. 

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Don’t Let Police, Media Mislead You About Fentanyl Exposure Overdoses

Once again, media outlets are rushing to sow panic by blindly accepting a police department’s claims that an officer may have accidentally overdosed by being in close physical proximity to fentanyl, reinforcing the false message that you can potentially overdose on the drug even if you don’t intentionally consume it.

This time we head to Tavares, Florida, where the Tavares Police Department distributed to the local press body camera footage of Officer Courtney Bannick appearing to collapse and pass out after encountering what turned out to be fentanyl and meth in a rolled-up dollar bill she found in a routine traffic stop.

Local news outlets lapped it up (the story, not the fentanyl) and the video footage ran on WESH (the local NBC affiliate), FOX 35, and elsewhere. In none of the initial stories does anybody so much as question whether what they’re seeing is actually being caused by exposure to fentanyl. The officer was wearing gloves, but it was windy, and police argue that it’s possible she breathed the fentanyl in. Officers on the scene say they gave her three doses of Narcan. They brought her to the hospital, where she fully recovered. She is now fine.

The Tavares Police Department is very clear that it’s releasing the body camera footage for the purpose of scaring people about fentanyl.

“Officer Bannick really wants others to take away that this drug is dangerous,” Tavares Detective Courtney Sullivan told WESH. “It’s dangerous for not only yourself but others around you. Something as simple as the wind could expose you and just like that, your life could end.”

This just isn’t true. Add it to the pile of many, many examples of police attempting to convince the public that any possible exposure to fentanyl may be deadly. It does not simply pass through the skin when you touch it. As for the claim that the officer might have inhaled it, a study from the American College of Medical Toxicology and American Academy of Clinical Toxicology calculated that a person would have to stand next to a massive amount of fentanyl for two and a half hours to feel its effects.

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This Couple Died by Suicide After the DEA Shut Down Their Pain Doctor

It was a Tuesday in early November when federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration paid a visit to the office of Dr. David Bockoff, a chronic pain specialist in Beverly Hills. It wasn’t a Hollywood-style raid—there were no shots fired or flash-bang grenades deployed—but the agents left behind a slip of paper that, according to those close to the doctor’s patients, had consequences just as deadly as any shootout.

On Nov. 1, the DEA suspended Bockoff’s ability to prescribe controlled substances, including powerful opioids such as fentanyl. While illicit fentanyl smuggled across the border by Mexican cartels has fueled a record surge in overdoses in recent years, doctors still use the pharmaceutical version during surgeries and for soothing the most severe types of pain. But amid efforts to shut down so-called “pill mills” and other illegal operations, advocates for pain patients say the DEA has gone too far, overcorrecting to the point that people with legitimate needs are blocked from obtaining the medication they need to live without suffering. 

One of Bockoff’s patients who relied on fentanyl was Danny Elliott, a 61-year-old native of Warner Robins, Georgia. In March 1991, Elliott was nearly electrocuted to death when a water pump he was using to drain a flooded basement malfunctioned, sending high-voltage shocks through his body for nearly 15 minutes until his father intervened to save his life. Elliott was never the same after the accident, which left him with debilitating, migraine-like headaches. Once a class president and basketball star in high school, he found himself spending days on end in a darkened bedroom, unable to bear sunlight or the sound of the outdoors. 

“I have these sensations like my brain is loose inside my skull,” Elliott told me in 2019, when I first interviewed him for the VICE News podcast series Painkiller. “If I turn my head too quickly, left or right, it feels like my brain sloshes around. Literally my eyes burn deep into my skull. My eyes hurt so bad that it hurts to blink.”

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A Horrifying Drug Called ‘Tranq Dope’ Is Spreading in the US

After two years of sobriety, Allie Gramlich began using drugs again in April. This time around, Philadelphia’s street opioid supply was infiltrated with tranq or tranq dope, a mixture of fentanyl mixed and the animal tranquilizer xylazine. The high was non-existent, she said, replaced by hours of unconsciousness followed by intense withdrawal—and when she wanted to come off it only a couple months later, the detox was even worse. 

“It was honestly the most traumatizing experience I’ve ever had in my life.” 

When Gramlich, 28, had previously detoxed off heroin and fentanyl, she said she was sick for about a week. But with tranq, she said her dopesickness—which included constant vomiting, intense heart palpitations, chills, and a complete lack of energy—lasted 21 days. She was given drugs like methadone and clonidine, which is used to treat anxiety, to help ease the withdrawal, but she said “there was no comfort at all the entire time.” 

“These detox centers, these rehabs, they have no idea what they’re in for. They have no idea how to treat it. Some of them don’t even know what xylazine is.” 

Gramlich went to an inpatient treatment program run by Recovery Centers of America, which she described as “one of the nicer rehabs.” Still, she said, she wasn’t tested for xylazine, and no one she came across was familiar enough with xylazine to discuss it with her. She said she didn’t start feeling normal again until a week after she left rehab and went into a sober living house. 

“I would encourage anyone to go to detox, but like my heart would break for them knowing what they were for,” she said. “Some of these people have been using this shit for years and if it was that bad for me I cannot even imagine… how bad it would be.” 

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Tim Ryan Took Money From Opioid Distributor Whose Executives Mocked Addicts as ‘Pillbillies’

On the campaign trail, Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic Senate candidate in Ohio, likes to tell voters about his work as co-chair of the Congressional Addiction, Treatment, and Recovery Caucus and to attack pharmaceutical companies for profiting from “getting so many millions of Americans hooked on opiates.” None of that stopped him from accepting money from a political action committee funded by an opioid distributor whose executives mocked addicts as “pillbillies,” a Washington Free Beacon review of campaign finance documents found.

The $1,000 donation came from AmerisourceBergen PAC in November 2019. Emails revealed in 2021 during a lawsuit against the company for its alleged role in the opioid crisis showed AmerisourceBergen’s executives expressing broad contempt for poor whites suffering from addiction, which at the time was largely fueled by pharmaceuticals such as OxyContin.

In one exchange, a senior AmerisourceBergen executive circulated a parody song containing references to “hillbilly heroin,” “a bevy of Pillbillies” and a reference to Kentucky as “OxyContinville.” Another email shared between executives joked about how crackdowns against so-called pill mills—doctors who illegally prescribe opioids to customers—in Florida will lead to a “max [sic] exodus of Pillbillies heading north.” 

The donation could prove to be a political liability for Ryan, a Democrat running in a state that has been inordinately impacted by the opioid crisis. The Associated Press reported earlier this month that opioid distributors donated at least $27,000 to Ryan’s political campaigns since 2007.

At the same time, the AP found, Ryan voted against bills meant to increase funding for anti-opioid initiatives, such as spending packages for addiction treatment. In a statement to the AP, Ryan’s campaign said one of the donors, Cardinal, is a large employer in Ohio.

The Ryan campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

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Flesh-eating drug ‘tranq’ meant for animals now linked to thousands of heroin, fentanyl ODs

The flesh-eating animal tranquilizer xylazine has been linked to thousands of drug overdoses across the country as it inundates heroin and fentanyl supplies in places such as Philadelphia, Delaware and Michigan, reports say.

Known on the street as “tranq,” the sedative is now found in 91% of Philly’s heroin and fentanyl supplies, according to a report earlier this month in the peer-reviewed journal Science Direct.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that its prevalence is also soaring in President Biden’s home state of Delaware, it was reported last week.

In Michigan, deaths from the drug, which is often used on horses as a muscle relaxant and anesthetic, increased 86.8% between 2019 and 2020 before dropping off slightly in 2021, the Detroit Free Press reported Friday. In the past two years, it was detected in half the opioid deaths in the Ann Arbor region, accelerating fears of its westward proliferation, the paper said.

Xylazine also was involved in 19% of all drug overdose deaths in Maryland in 2021 and 10% of those in Connecticut the year before, according to federal officials.

Xylazine causes wounds and sores on users’ bodies, resulting in a significant increase of soft-tissue infections, bone disease and amputations in places such as Philadelphia, substance-abuse field epidemiologist Jen Shinefeld told Vice in March.

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Biden Admin Is Placing Vending Machines Filled With Drug Supplies in Rural Kentucky

The Biden administration is set to spend $3.6 million to deploy vending machines filled with drug supplies in rural Kentucky—an effort the Biden administration claims will reduce stigma for drug users.

The project from the National Institutes of Health was launched in August and will study the effectiveness of “harm reduction kiosks” in rural Appalachia that contain “injection equipment, naloxone, fentanyl test strips, hygiene kits, condoms, and other supplies.” The vending machines allow drug users to obtain items such as syringes without interacting with a health professional, in hopes of eliminating the “stigma” that comes with visiting an in-person harm reduction facility, according to the health agency.

The White House referenced the project in an August 31 press release on its actions taken “to address addiction and the overdose epidemic.” The administration has adopted a wide range of harm reduction policies, which aim to make illicit drug use safer rather than eliminate it.

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New Synthetic Opioid That Is 10-15x Stronger Than Fentanyl Discovered In Colorado

A new synthetic opioid that is much stronger than fentanyl and morphine has been discovered in Colorado.

The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office issued a public alert Thursday warning residents that the drug had been discovered in the state. According to local news outlet KKCO, the drug, N-pyrrolidino Etonitazene, also known by the street name PYRO, is 1,000-1,500 times more powerful than morphine. By comparison, fentanyl is only about 100 times more powerful than morphine, meaning PYRO is 10-15 times stronger than fentanyl.

“A new synthetic opioid has been found in Colorado,” the Sheriff’s Office said in the alert. “The small light blue pills with dark blue flakes are marked with an ‘M’ on one side and ’30’ on the other. This opioid is known as PYRO. Laboratories have determined the pills are more potent than fentanyl. Please use caution if you encounter this opioid and notify law enforcement immediately.”

Small quantities of the drug had previously been discovered in Denver. A spokesman for the Denver Police Department confirmed to Newsweek that it had been found. “Our narcotics investigators tell us anecdotally that minimal amounts of this synthetic opioid have been found in Denver thus far, however one recovery was related to an overdose death that is under investigation, so it’s certainly a concern for us,” the spokesman said.

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Scientists Expose “Laughable” CDC Misinformation Video Currently Up On Their Website

Within the CDC there is a smaller department known as the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). NIOSH claims to promote productive workplaces through safety and health research. But as the following video on their website shows, the last thing they appear to be interested in is research.

According to the CDC, this video helps “emergency responders understand the risks and communicate what they can do to protect themselves from exposure to illicit drugs.”

But it does nothing of the sort and actually does the opposite.

To save 13 minutes of boredom, there is no need to watch the video. It simply shows multiple cops enter a hotel room in which there is a tiny bit of fentanyl on the dresser. Within minutes of being in the room — and while wearing a respirator — one of the officers falls out. According to the video, the CDC, and the experts who conducted their “research,” this was due to fentanyl exposure — for merely being in the same room with the powder — and despite toxicology results showing negative for fentanyl.

Amanda D’Ambrosio, an Enterprise & Investigative Writer for MedPage Today interviewed several experts in the field about the CDC’s use of this video and their misinformed messaging on fentanyl exposure. She is warning that the CDC’s guidance is actually misleading law enforcement.

“No one has explained exactly what’s happened in that video, it’s all conjecture,” Brandon del Pozo, PhD, a drug policy and public health researcher at Brown University and former police chief told the outlet. “It is surprising to see something with such a basis in conjecture being presented by an agency that has a commitment to science.”

The NIOSH video provides little evidence confirming how these officers were exposed to the drugs, and no real explanation of the health effects that it aims to prevent, experts told MedPage Today. Drug researchers and scientists say that the video inflates law enforcement officers’ risk of overdose, incites fear within the police force, and ultimately, causes harm to people who use drugs.

As TFTP reported this week, overdose deaths in the U.S. have hit record numbers and of the more than 100,000 people who have died, roughly 70 percent of them involved fentanyl. Make no mistake, fentanyl is deadly but only when it is ingested.

You cannot overdose by merely being exposed to fentanyl.

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