Heroin cut with elephant tranquilizer overdoses surge

Heroin overdoses are surging and many believe a painkiller used to tranquilize elephants and other large animals is to blame.

Heroin overdoses are surging and many believe a painkiller used to tranquilize elephants and other large animals is to blame. Carfentanil, a synthetic elephant tranquilizer 10,000 times stronger than morphine, has recently appeared on the drug scene and has spread like wildfire.

Already, health care across the U.S. is struggling with increasing overdoses and deaths, largely blamed on heroin mixed with entanyl, carfentanil’s, weaker little sister, weighing in at 100 times stronger than morphine. Carfentanil may be tied to nearly 200 overdoses in just two states.

One clue is that in Ohio and Indiana, it is noted that an increase of OD patients require higher doses of antidote Narcan to survive. Medically, this points the finger at at carfentanil, suggests Lt. Tom Fallon of Hamilton County ‘s Heroin Task Force in Ohio. Other symptoms are shallow breathing and blue lips.

In September, Phillip Watkins, 31, and Jeannetta Crawford, 26, both of Cincinnati, were charged with dealing heroin laced with carfentanil, in what could be the first carfentanil-related criminal case prosecuted by feds. Packed emergency rooms for the past months support the numbers, an unheard of 174 heroin overdoses in just 6 days in Cincinnati alone.

In the drug world, dopers are using the powerful drug to give addicts stronger highs. Colorless and without odor, carfentanil makes it impossible for addicts to know they are ingesting it.

Many consider heroin overdoses to be ‘somebody else’s problem.’ Then the day comes that it’s your neighbor, your brother, your husband or your son on a stretcher. If heroin is the devil, cartfentanil is Satan’s high priest.