The family of the famous musician sues a doctor who prescribed him a phenanthile. The opiate drug that reigns supreme in the US black market can theoretically overcome pain, but in practice is responsible for a series of deaths. In Ohio alone, 1245 people were admitted to hospitals in a serious condition during the year.
- Dr. Michael Schulenberg confessed to prescribing the musician not only phenanthyl but also oxycodone – another opioid shortly before his death. He issued the prescription in the name of the bodyguard to protect the musician’s privacy. Prince died on April 21 at his mansion in a suburb of Minneapolis
- The musician’s family decided to sue the doctor who prescribed him ill-fated drugs and the hospital where he worked. In the lawsuit, he accuses him that “a few days before Prince’s death, they had the opportunity and the duty to diagnose and treat his addiction and prevent his death. They have failed in this field ». The relatives of the musician demand over 50 dollars in damages. The doctor is not guilty
- On April 21, Prince Rogers Nelson died of a fentanyl overdose in a mansion in a suburb of Minneapolis. Cause of death of the star publicized the most dangerous but poorly known opioid agent – phenanthyl
- Fentanyl is a synthetic opium derivative, an analgesic that was introduced into medicine in the 60s. It is a hundred times more potent than morphine and 30-50 times more potent than heroin. “ It’s so strong and so deadly that even a microgram can kill, ” said Rusty Payne, spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. government’s anti-drug agency
Doctors prescribe fentanyl for people with cancer or other severe pain patients; the drug is most often sold in the form of lollipops or patches, but on the black market you can also buy it in a different form. It is this specificity that is behind the growing epidemic of drug-related deaths, which only claimed 2014 in 47. victims, according to the latest estimates by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It was then that fentanyl subjugated the masses of Americans.
In recent years, this drug has been illegally manufactured in Mexican and Chinese laboratories. It was often added to heroin without the buyers knowing it, enhancing the drug’s lethal properties. Illegal fentanyl can be taken as gel capsules, nasal sprays, pills, and recently it has also been produced after drugs such as xanax and oxycontin. “Some people abuse fentanyl knowing what they are dealing with, others take fentanyl-treated heroin, and others take counterfeit oxycontin tablets,” says Payne.
It is not known what form of fentanyl Prince was taken. About 2005 people died from opiates of this type between 2007 and XNUMX in the American Midwest, but then all traces led to a Mexican laboratory. When the US Drug Enforcement Administration closed the facility, the problem of fentanyl ceased for a while.
The first warnings that the epidemic had returned came in March 2015. It was then announced that the number of hospitalizations due to overdose of fentanyl had increased nationwide. Worse still, now many laboratories and countries have taken over the production of opiates. (…) Payne notes that because of the strong effects of fentanyl, dealers can make better money on it than they used to on heroin, using previously established heroin routes.
In some US states, fentanyl is already responsible for the majority of drug overdose deaths. In 2015, more than half of the 1319 opioid deaths in Massachusetts found fentanyl in the body of the deceased, as did 283 victims of the New Hampshire drug epidemic. “Fentanyl is killing our compatriots,” Manchester Police Chief Nick Willard warned last year in Congress.
If the U.S. Northeast has seen the most dramatic increase in opioid deaths, Payne insists that the epidemic is by no means confined to that region. “I couldn’t point to places where this problem does not exist,” a DEA spokesman said.
In Minnesota, deaths from fentanyl overdoses have been relatively low – 2015 people died from it in 36, according to official data. During this period, 1245 people with symptoms of overdose were admitted to hospital in Ohio, the largest number in the United States, according to the CDC.
Meanwhile, data on fentanyl are incomplete. It is not always possible to establish what kind of opiate the patient died from. However, officials do not have doubts about the fact that there has been a sharp increase in mortality due to substances of this type from 500 in 2013 to nearly 6000 in 2015. “If it were the zika virus, we’d all be sounding the alarm,” admits Traci Green, deputy director at the Boston Medical Injury Prevention Center and one of the people who prepared the data on the subject.
A month ago, the DEA released a report warning of the effects of counterfeit oxycodone tablets intercepted at San Diego’s Otay Mesa port, which were found to contain fentanyl. Reports of similar incidents involving a counterfeit xanax or norco flow from all over the country. Reports compiled by epidemiologist Steven P. Kurtz, director of the Center for Applied Research on Substance Use and Health Disparities, found that fentanyl in a variety of forms was intercepted in California, Florida, and central US, Wisconsin, and Ohio beyond the Mississippi River.
For some time now, the US sanitary and law enforcement services have been looking for a way to contain the epidemic. In October 2015, China, at Washington’s request, banned the production of some fentanyl equivalents. In response, chemistry adepts prepared specifics with a slightly changed formula, providing opiates that had never been tested on humans before. “I’d call it a” Gosh Mocks! “Game in which drug agencies only bring more moles to life, criticized Michael Gilbert, an epidemiologist who specializes in risk minimization. “The best way to reduce hospitalization and mortality [from fentanyl] is not by stricter law, but by trying to understand why people choose this drug,” he noted.
Payne, in turn, emphasizes that the mission of the institution she represents is to completely eliminate fentanyl. “There is no such thing as a safe amount of this substance,” said a DEA spokesman.
Many US states also facilitate access to a drug called naloxone, which reverses the effects of opiate overdoses, and relaxes the law so that admitting a drug overdose will not be charged. Other states, such as New Hampshire, have tightened penalties on dealers dispensing lethal doses of fentanyl. Minnesota prosecutors have consistently demanded the same sentence as third degree murder for these criminals.
Source: The Guardian, www.rollingstone.com,