The Higher Institute of Health has published on the home page of the site a close-up on Fentanyl entitled “What is Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid one hundred times more powerful than morphine which is not the zombie drug”. The publication comes two days after the third degree alert was issued in Italy on April 30 after the discovery of fentanyl as a cutting substance in a dose of heroin seized a few weeks ago in the Perugia area. The discovery triggered the National Rapid Alert System for Drugs (News-D), coordinated by the Department for Anti-Drug Policies (Dpa).
This is, specifies the ISS, “a communication of maximum urgency which is sent to all operators who deal with consumers of substances of abuse” including forensic toxicologists, police forces, the Ministry of Health, the AIFA (Italian Medicines Agency), the regional health departments, the emergency rooms, the hospitals. “The alerts are coordinated by the Department of Anti-drug Policies, whose operational arm is the National Center for Addiction and Doping of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, it is warned that there is a health alert for drug users. The level 3 alert refers to substances that can cause severe poisoning or deaths, such as Fentanyl for example”, the ISS further specifies.
In the update, edited by Simona Pichini and Elida Sergi, the ISS recalls that Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid with narcotic analgesic properties. It is about 100 times more potent than morphine, but also about 100 times more toxic. Its analogues, more than 150 illicit analogues currently on the black market, are up to a thousand times more potent than morphine. The most common examples are Sufentanyl or Carfentanyl. In Italy, Fentanyl is used for permitted purposes and under medical supervision as a general anesthetic in major surgery operations and in palliative therapy for terminal cancer pain.
In the drug market, however, it can be used as a cutting agent for heroin or even in place of heroin itself and processed in illegal laboratories.
“Neither heroin mixed with Fentanyl nor Fentanyl alone is a zombie drug – explains the ISS -. This is defined as a preparation of heroin or fentanyl cut with xylazine, a veterinary anesthetic and muscle relaxant, currently used very little in Italy, but instead used by the illicit market to make a cut that gives more power to the preparation but costs less. Xylazine produces skin ulcers in the upper and lower limbs, especially where heroin street preparations are injected. These deep ulcerations turn users into zombies: hence the name used to define this drug”.
