Alaska healthcare professionals are working to stay current on new “synthetic opioids” and fentanyl-related drugs across the state in order to get correct data about the substances causing overdoses.
In the two years and eight months between January 1, 2014 and September 15, 2016, 122 drug overdose deaths from synthetic opioids and heroin were reported to the Alaska mortality database.
A majority, 61 of those, happened in the Anchorage and Mat-Su area, 19 of the deaths, or 16 percent, were recorded along the Gulf Coast, and 7 percent happened in Southeast.
While a lot of attention has focused on Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS) like spice and bath salts in recent years, many synthetic narcotics are being manufactured and distributed on the black market, sometimes without the customer’s knowledge of what they are buying.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid “analgesic that is similar to morphine but is 50 to 100 times more potent” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. It is often mixed with heroin and the strength of fentanyl means it has more of a potential to cause overdoses, requiring a higher dosage of anti-overdose drugs.
The State of Alaska Epidemiology says despite work to classify these new synthetic opioids, many remain uncategorized.