By Lois M. Collins: Complete Post through this link…
Meth and cocaine among growing number of substances laced with the synthetic opioid.
A “fourth wave” of overdose deaths in the U.S. has been largely driven by mixing stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine with fentanyl, creating a 50-fold increase in related deaths since 2010.
That finding in a study just published in the journal Addiction shows the public health challenge and deadly risk posed as first opioids and now stimulants are increasingly laced with the illicitly made synthetic opioid fentanyl, according to researchers from the University of California Los Angeles.
The number of overdose deaths in the U.S. crossed the 100,000 mark for the first time in 2021. That’s a terrible “first” that three-fourths of the time included the synthetic opioid. Now “polysubstance overdoses” that also involve fentanyl dominate.
