DEA warns of brightly colored fentanyl ‘used to target young People’

CNN  — 

The US Drug Enforcement Administration issued a warning Tuesday about “brightly-colored fentanyl used to target young People.”

The company mentioned it and its companions in regulation enforcement seized colored fentanyl and fentanyl tablets in 18 states this month.

“This development seems to be a brand new methodology utilized by drug cartels to promote extremely addictive and doubtlessly lethal fentanyl made to seem like sweet to kids and young individuals,” the DEA mentioned.

“Brightly-colored fentanyl is being seized in a number of types, together with tablets, powder, and blocks that resembles sidewalk chalk. Regardless of claims that sure colours could also be stronger than others, there isn’t a indication via DEA’s laboratory testing that that is the case. Each shade, form, and measurement of fentanyl needs to be thought of extraordinarily harmful.”

Fentanyl is an artificial opioid meant to assist individuals reminiscent of most cancers sufferers handle extreme ache. It’s 50 to 100 instances stronger than morphine. It’s used illicitly as a result of of its heroin-like impact, and even small doses may be lethal.

“Fentanyl stays the deadliest drug risk going through this nation,” the DEA mentioned.

Greater than 109,000 individuals in america died of a drug overdose within the 12-month interval ending March 2022, in accordance to provisional knowledge printed this month by the US Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention. Fentanyl and different artificial opioids had been concerned in additional than two-thirds of overdose deaths in that point – up from simply over half in the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Within the two years because the begin of the Covid-19 pandemic, annual drug overdose deaths have jumped 44%. There have been 75,702 deaths within the 12-month interval ending March 2020, in contrast with 109,247 deaths within the newest 12-month interval ending March 2022.

Drug deaths amongst kids are comparatively uncommon. However unintentional overdoses led to 200,000 years of misplaced life for US preteens and teenagers who died between 2015 and 2019, and consultants suspect that the issue has gotten worse in the course of the pandemic.