the devastating effects of opioids

Epidemic, war zone, bottom of the world: each person will give a different word to qualify this setting of Philadelphia (United States), devastated by fentanyl. Today in America, fentanyl and its derivatives cause 3,000 deaths every 15 days, the equivalent of September 11 every two weeks. These human tragedies, Dawn Killen knew them closely, when she took drugs in these streets 10 years ago. “I left a lot of friends behind me on the street. And today it makes me happy just to see that some survived another week“, says the member of the association “Les anges en mouvement”.

A very difficult drug to detect

The association, which helps drug addicts, tries to bring comfort. Fentanyl is an opioid, originally a painkiller, widely over-prescribed by American doctors. Since then, pure and illegal fentanyl has been sold massively by drug traffickers. Consumed by pill or injection, it is a drug 50 times more addictive than heroin and much cheaper: sometimes 10 dollars per sachet.

Faced with this catastrophic situation, the American government has just launched Operation Blue Lotus on the Mexican border, deploying hundreds of additional police officers and investing hundreds of millions of dollars in next-generation scanners. Because that’s the problem with fentanyl: it’s very difficult to detect.