Nebraska police have discovered fake prescription pills laced with the synthetic opioid fentanyl in the city of Omaha, just over a week after the Drug Enforcement Administration issued a public alert warning Mexican drug cartels are making them in “mass quantities” with the intention of selling them to users throughout North America.
The DEA did not specify what pills were being faked, but photos of what it said it had seized showed mostly pills which are baby blue in color and stamped with the letter “M,” on one side, and the number “30” on the other. They appear similar to a brand of prescription painkiller oxycodone hydrochloride, and the DEA warned against the circulation of the counterfeit pills which contain “potentially lethal doses of fentanyl.”
“The scary part of not knowing what is in there, could be something more deadly than fentanyl. It could be rat poison, or it could be anything,” Bianchi added.
Dr. Kenneth Zoucha, director of Addiction Medicine Division at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, told the news outlet some of his patients are taking the fake pills because of their accessibility.
“People are very willing to buy those off the street because they can get them,” he said.
According to the DEA, 27 percent of counterfeit pills seized by the government agency contain doses of fentanyl which could be potentially lethal.
“Capitalizing on the opioid epidemic and prescription drug abuse in the United States, drug trafficking organizations are now sending counterfeit pills made with fentanyl in bulk to the United States for distribution,” the DEA’s acting head Uttam Dhillon said in a statement.
Dhillon added that pills containing fentanyl and fentanyl-laced heroin cause thousands of deaths every year in the United States.
Pharmaceutical fentanyl, however, has been approved for treating severe pain for conditions such as late-stage cancer and is prescribed by doctors typically through transdermal patches or lozenges.
