6-27-18 While huge attention has been paid to the opioid crisis in the US – where the misuse of prescription drugs like fentanyl dominates – figures released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has revealed seizures in Africa of opioids now account for 87% of the global total.
Unlike in the US, the seizures – concentrated in west, central and north Africa – have largely consisted of the drug tramadol, followed by codeine. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/jun/27/misuse-opioids-tramadol-fentanyl-global-epidemic
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2-26-18
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4-19-18 Fentanyl and its analogs are thought to have sparked the ongoing and largest wave of deaths seen during the crisis starting around 2013, aided by the fact that fentanyl is often much cheaper and up to 100 times more potent than opioids like morphine. In many cases, people have died from doses no bigger than a grain of sand. In 2016 alone, fentanyl and related drugs were responsible for almost 20,000 deaths—double the amount seen in 2015. These deaths accounted for nearly a third of all overdose deaths that year. https://gizmodo.com/unclear-whether-government-efforts-to-stop-fentanyl-dea-1825242256
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1-31-18 Five or six times a day a man from Texas injects a dose of carefully measured fentanyl. He does it when he wakes up and before he goes to work, and sometimes on breaks. It makes him drowsy, but he says people can’t usually tell he just used.
He gets his supply the way other people buy books and Bluetooth speakers: he orders it online, then waits for it to come in the U.S. mail. (I was connected to this man through a researcher on the condition of anonymity, out of concern he would be jailed if discovered.)
Researchers say the internet is a surprisingly common method of obtaining fentanyl, an opioid that is now responsible for more overdose deaths than heroin or prescription painkillers. Far from the shady, street-corner deals of popular imagination, more and more drug buys are taking place online, often with the help of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for added anonymity.
Recently, a group of investigators with the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations Googled “buy fentanyl online” on the open internet, then homed in on the six sites that were most responsive to their requests. An investigator on the committee, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the findings, said these represent a tiny fraction of the hundreds of fentanyl-selling sites on the web. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/01/the-surprising-ease-of-buying-fentanyl-online/551915/
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12-15-17 At least 66,324 people died of drug overdoses during the 12-month period ending in May 2017, up 17 percent from the 56,488 who died between May 2015 and May 2016, according to data released this week by the National Center for Health Statistics.
That's a population roughly equivalent to Union City, New Jersey, or Portland, Maine. https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-12-15/drug-overdose-deaths-continue-to-soar
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1-19-18 Fentanyl exported from China to the United States comes in several different forms: fentanyl, its precursor chemicals, fentanyl variants, and fentanyl-laced counterfeit prescription opioids.5 India exports many controlled and prescription drugs to the United States, including fentanyl. Indian fentanyl exports to the United States are a fraction of those from China, but India does export tramadol, which is a growing issue for the United States. However, unlike China, which has now designated over 100 fentanyl variants and precursors on its list of controlled substances,6 India has not placed fentanyl, or most other opioids, on its controlled substances list, easing production and export. India only regulates 17 of the 24 basic precursor chemicals for fentanyl (as listed by the UN 1988 Convention against Drugs).7
In the Middle East Africa, the less potent opioid tramadol, not fentanyl, is responsible for the opioid crisis. India is the biggest supplier.
Tramadol is a less powerful opioid, though more potent if taken orally than injected due to its chemical makeup, and it is not regulated by international conventions nor in many countries. Tramadol is prescribed as a pain medication, but because of tramadol’s stimulant effects, it can allow people to feel high-functioning while taking dangerously high doses. This combination is dangerous: cities with high tramadol abuse have reported increasingly high rates of traffic accidents. …
One potential reason India does not regulate tramadol, or other opioids, is the lack of domestic concern about addiction. However, India does have addiction problems, and India’s Home Minister Shri Rajnath Singh specifically acknowledged that tramadol addiction is a growing problem.16 Yet, the government acknowledgement has not been sufficient; government corruption plays a role with the pharmaceutical corporations, wholesale exporters and internet companies responsible for the illicit flow of opioids out of India. In their 2017 report on corruption, Transparency International found that India had the highest bribery rates across the Asia Pacific region.17
https://thediplomat.com/2018/01/tramadol-the-dangerous-opioid-from-india/....................................................................................
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