Britain faces an ‘apocalyptic’ future if it does not tackle horror drug fentanyl that is FIFTY times stronger than heroin and has killed 60 people
BRITAIN faces an “apocalyptic” future if it does not tackle a horror drug which has killed at least 60 since December, a Sun investigation has found.
Synthetic painkiller fentanyl, 50 times stronger than heroin, has already ravaged whole communities in America, where it causes 10,000 deaths annually. Superstar Prince was a victim last year.
His death prompted singer Chaka Khan to admit she was also addicted, while Michael Jackson, who died in 2009, had also been a user of the “zombie drug”.
Now Home Secretary Amber Rudd has vowed to tackle the problem before fentanyl takes hold here.
Former undercover cop Neil Woods said: “We face a fairly apocalyptic future if the fentanyl problem is not tackled. There are more and more people dying, or coming close to it, because of this drug than ever before.
“If fentanyl becomes as widespread as it is already in North America, this will pile disaster on top of disaster.”
Robert Fraser died just after his 18th birthday last November after unknowingly taking fentanyl.
His mum Michelle, from Deal, Kent, said a cannabis dealer gave Robert and his friends a packet of white powder to try.
She said: “The guys that sold them the cannabis said to them, ‘Try it, it’s similar to MDMA’.
“He was poisoned and taken away from everyone and everything he loved.”
In December last year highly respected Army Captain Ben Jukes, 32, who secretly used heroin and cocaine to cope with stress, took a fatal overdose of fentanyl, a Class A drug, at his Manchester home.
Then last month an inquest found that Jemma Longthorp, 20, had died from a cocktail of drugs she had bought online, including fentanyl.
Jemma, from Headington, Oxon, suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder and feared that medication from her GP would not help.
In Barnsley and Leeds over the Easter weekend there were six deaths linked to contaminated heroin.
Tests on the recovered drugs found traces of fentanyl.
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There were six similar deaths in three weeks in Stockton-on-Tees, seven in eight weeks in Hull and a string of fatalities in Chipping Norton, Oxon, Blyth in Northumberland and Boston, Lincs.
And in February, a dad of three from Hull fell victim to the painkiller after mixing it with a deadly cocktail of drugs.
The National Crime Agency is trying to trace every customer of a filthy garage laboratory in the north of England which sold the drug online. It has so far identified 443 customers, including 172 in Britain, at least one of whom died.
On Monday a 25-year-old man from Gwent was charged in connection with the supply of synthetic opioids. Three men from Leeds have also been charged.
Fentanyl, which is up to 100 times more potent than morphine, is prescribed in the UK for pain relief for cancer sufferers and in palliative care, usually in the form of skin patches or lollipops. Without a prescription, possession carries a possible seven-year jail sentence, with life imprisonment for supply.
Traffickers use fentanyl — dubbed “hit and run” because it leaves no trace in the body — to cut into other drugs, most often heroin, because it is cheap to manufacture and very potent. Because it has no scent, it can be sent through the post undetected by sniffer dogs.
While most deaths seem to be caused by inadvertently taking it in other drugs, Ian Cruxton, of the NCA, said: “It is also bought on the dark web by middle-class people who wish to experience its effect as a drug in its own right.
“It can cause a very sudden death. With heroin, people may slowly fade in- to unconscious- ness. With fentanyl people have dropped just like that.” On the dark web — part of the internet not in normal use — the drug can be bought for around £45 a gram. An amount the size of a salt grain can provide a powerful hit.
In America, while the problem is widespread, Ohio has been especially hard hit, with fentanyl overdoses up around twofold to 1,155 last year.
There, medics are used to dragging overdose victims from ditches and children are accustomed to seeing their junkie parents jolted back to life with the antidote Narcan.
Some paramedics have doubled the amount of Narcan they carry, while hospitals have started placing wheelchairs near their entrances purely so they can get abandoned overdose victims into treatment quickly.
In deprived areas of the state, such as East Liverpool, £8-a-pop hits of the opiate are all too tempting.
Last September police there published a picture of a couple passed out from opiates in the front of their car while a child in a dinosaur T-shirt sat helplessly in the back.
As US cops struggle to tackle the scourge of fentanyl, a related drug threatens an even worse crisis. Carfentanyl, which is 100 times stronger, is used to anaesthetise elephants. Two US police officers nearly died after inhaling it during a raid.
Rick Bradley, operations manager at UK drug addiction charity Addaction, explained the difficulty in saving fentanyl overdose victims.
He said: “Club and festival goers may assume someone in difficulty is just having a bad experience on recreational drugs. But if that person is not given the right medical support, they risk respiratory failure.
“We would advise anyone concerned about drugs to go to their local GP, their local drug and alcohol services or contact Addaction for advice.”
Additional reporting: JAMES BEAL