The “zombie drug” that caused such a massacre in the USA that it ended up at the center of the summits between Biden and Xi Jinping is in Italy. Fentanyl was found as a cutting substance in a dose of heroin sold in Perugia, the synthetic opioid 80 times more powerful than morphine which, according to the Centers for Disease Control, caused over 100 thousand deaths from severe acute intoxication in the United States in 2022 alone . The alarm about the presence of the synthetic opioid also in our country was raised in recent weeks after a random check carried out by the staff of a social cooperative on a dose of ‘street’ heroin sold to a user of the Serd of Terni. The powerful analgesic was found in the dose in a percentage of 5%. The Department for Anti-Drug Policies took immediate action, while the Ministry of Health sent a note to the Health Departments of all the Regions to urge them to inform people who use substances of the “very serious” health risks.
“Fentanyl, which is a drug that must be used under medical guidance to control severe pain – says Professor Matteo Bassetti, director of the Infectious Diseases Clinic of the San Martino Polyclinic in Genoa – has become in recent years a surrogate for heroin, so much so that it has earned the title of ‘zombie drug’. Why is Fentanyl used to cut heroin? It has several advantages for drug dealers: in addition to being as powerful as heroin and morphine, it is cheap. to any cultivation, because it is a synthetic drug – explains Bassetti – made in a laboratory. Furthermore, being very powerful, minimal quantities are enough to have many doses. Great care must be taken if you use narcotic substances: Fentanyl – he concludes -. kills more than heroin and morphine.”
The Istituto Superiore di Sanità explains in a note that the synthetic opioid is “about 100 times more powerful than morphine, but also about 100 times more toxic. Its analogues, more than 150 illicit analogues currently on the black market, reach up to be up to a thousand times more potent than morphine. The most common examples are Sufentanyl or Carfentanyl. Fentanyl is used for permitted purposes and under medical supervision as a general anesthetic in major surgery and in palliative therapy for terminal pain. oncological. In the drug market, however, it can be used as a cutting agent for heroin or even in place of heroin itself”. Neither heroin mixed with Fentanyl nor Fentanyl alone is a zombie drug, the ISS points out; “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”, it is explained.
The Perugia case triggered a third degree alert, a communication of maximum urgency that is sent to all operators who deal with consumers of substances of abuse (forensic toxicology, police forces, the Ministry of Health , AIFA, regional health departments, emergency rooms, hospitals). Investigations are underway to see if the phenomenon is limited or widespread.
