Fentanyl in drugs sold in Perugia, the prosecutor’s office opens an investigation. What is the real zombie drug

PERUGIA – Fentanyl in a dose of heroin sold in Perugia: after the national alert for the synthetic opioid which if inhaled causes very serious damage to the brain, the prosecutor’s office headed by Raffaele Cantone opens an investigation. The chief prosecutor had announced it in recent days, saying he was “concerned” and the opening of the file therefore appears to be an automatic and obvious act. But not only for the investigation itself – currently for the crime of drug dealing – but also for the necessary investigations that the investigators seem to be intending to carry out to see clearly.

“I want to try to understand if it is a sporadic event or if there are similar episodes”, announced Cantone, but it is clear that the investigations are 360 ​​degrees, also to reconstruct the steps of that dose passed off on the street in the city, which ended in the hands of a consumer being treated at Sert in Terni and reached the experts of the Perugia street unit who were the first to report the presence of Fentanyl. So that dose ended up under the microscopes of Professor Cristiana Gambelunghe, head of the UniPg Toxicology Laboratory, and then of the Higher Institute of Health, who confirmed that 5 percent of Fentanyl was used as a cutting substance in a mix composed of half heroin, 30 percent codeine and 15 percent diazepam. We also need to evaluate the reliability of the consumer and understand how he intuited (or tested) the danger of that dose, to have an even clearer picture for navigating the undergrowth of drug dealing in the city. Certainly, the results of the analyzes do not lie: although the opioid was present in residual quantities, the Ministry of Health’s alert was raised to level 3, the maximum. In the note from the ministry’s prevention directorate, the various regional health departments are asked to urgently forward the information to departments and public services for addictions, therapeutic communities and social and health personnel to «inform people who use substances of very serious health risks” for the use of Fentanyl. Capable, if inhaled, of causing toxic leukoencephalopathy, a serious brain pathology that leads from mild confusion to lack of reactivity, up to coma and death.
But the Higher Institute of Health clarified yesterday that the opioid, with narcotic analgesic properties, 100 times more powerful and more toxic than morphine, is not in reality the so-called “zombie drug”. Used in Italy, for permitted purposes and under medical supervision, as a general anesthetic in major surgery operations and in palliative therapy for terminal cancer pain. On the street, however, it is used as a cutting substance. «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”.

But the alert must remain high, with the invitation to the police forces to carry out stringent monitoring for any suspicious prescriptions and checks on the places where Fentanyl is stored. Also due to “a certain elasticity and readiness of Italian criminal associations – said the Minister of Health Orazio Schillaci – in particular of the ‘Ndrangheta to implement this substance”.

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