As more heroin is mixed with fentanyl, opioid crisis turns even deadlier
Leo Beletsky, a drug policy researcher at Northeastern University in Boston, said that evolution is a predictable outcome of the “iron law of prohibition,” which holds that any banned substance will become more concentrated to maximize its financial return.
“It takes a lot of effort to produce heroin,” he said. “It takes much less effort to synthesize fentanyl in a lab, so I imagine the market will continue to turn in that direction. …
I think we’ve not seen the peak of the overdose crisis.”
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“The more the product is handled, the greater the potential to go airborne,” Riccio said.
Even drug-sniffing police dogs are endangered by synthetics; some have reportedly died after inhaling the drugs. The University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine recently released a video advising veterinarians on how to treat dogs that accidentally overdose (naloxone, the overdose-reversing medication, works on canines, too).