Police Chief Tom Synan of Newtown, Ohio, who heads the Hamilton County Heroin Coalition, told The Cincinnati Enquirer that Cincinnati’s spike is similar to the overdoses a few weeks ago in the Ohio cities of Akron and Columbus, when carfentanil was identified in the heroin. Since Tuesday, 33 more people have overdosed in Cincinnati, including one fatal overdose.
Advertisement
Emergency rooms estimate they had 174 suspected opioid overdose cases this week, including three deaths.
Carfentanil is the most potent opioid used commercially, 10,000 times stronger than morphine.
Police and the county heroin task force are continuing to look into whether the overdoses are connected by a possibly potent batch.
The city of Cincinnati is direly affected by the heroin epidemic and police have reported that between Tuesday morning and Wednesday night carfentanil-laced heroin has caused more than 50 people in the Buckeye State city to overdose.
When a patient experiences a drug overdose, hospitals and clinics typically use mass spectrometry tests to find out what the patient took.
“Of the victims (Tuesday) that would talk to us and were honest in telling us where they received this heroin from, it’s from several different people … from several different areas”, Jones told the local ABC station.
“I couldn’t have that”, she said.
Due to the emergency responders and Narcan, no one died.
WLWT’s Dan Griffin was on hand when police responded to an overdose in District 5.
He thinks a bad batch of heroin likely from Cincinnati and laced with an elephant tranquilizer is to blame.
The blend was described by police as potentially a mixture of heroin and fentanyl.
“Yes”, said Dr. Shawn Ryan, a certified addiction expert and founder of BrightView Health, an outpatient addiction medicine practice with offices in Norwood and Colerain Township in suburban Cincinnati.
“It’s an incredibly unsafe drug”, Cook said.
APD officers have also attended training in use of Narcan and carry overdose supplies with them when on duty, officials said. She said it’s like trying to hit “a moving target”.
“These are battles that we need to win so that we can wage a more effective war”, Kasich said.
Cincinnati has had a unsafe dance with heroin addiction over the past years.
Officials have little doubt that the carfentanil that’s showing up in street drugs is from overseas, just as fentanyl is manufactured and brought across the US borders.
According to the DEA, most fentanyl analogues in the United States are being manufactured in China and transported through Mexico.
Advertisement
“I’m not sure how in-depth they go with the testing”, he said. One Ohio coroner told users they were “literally gambling” with their lives.
