Tom Fisher (Photo courtesy of LinkedIn)
A drug said to be 20 times more potent than Fentanyl has been found in Arkansas.
Arkansas State Drug Director, Tom Fisher, spoke with KATV on Tuesday to warn Arkansans about a new drug referred to as nitazene. Nitazene’s are said to be a synthetic opioid manufactured in illegal labs, and are much more lethal than Fentanyl.
According to Deputy Trey Eddings at the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office, an influx of nitazene has not been found locally, but a few unknown pills have been recovered and sent to the Arkansas State Crime Lab for testing, with no results given yet due to the back up at the lab. The Baxter County Sheriff’s Office does not have a way to test the pills locally, therefore everything has to be sent off to the crime lab.
As of Monday morning, the state crime lab has not detected any overdoses linked to nitazenes, and the cases found this year were reportedly in an object that can be smoked. Fisher states due to the potency of nitazenes, the opioid reversal drug naloxone may not be able to combat possible overdoses.
Eddings would like to advise the public to not take any pills or powders that do not come from a pharmacy, because they have seen cases of the drugs being laced with Fentanyl and other narcotics.
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