LETTER: Drug carfentanil often can't be reversed by Narcan

Overdoses are happening everywhere, all over the country. In our current society, the streets are filled to the brim with laced heroin that’s often mixed with carfentanil and other fentanyl analogs. Dealers are now adding it to street pressed pills, cocaine, meth, and marijuana too.

Carfentanil was made in 1974 to be used to tranquilize elephants and other large mammals. It’s not meant for human consumption. Most of the time carfentanil cannot be reversed by Narcan, the anti-opioid overdose reversal drug used today. Someone who is exposed to Carfentanil can experience dizziness, clammy skin, shallow breathing, heart failure and respiratory depression leading to a fatal overdose.

Carfentanil and other opioids are responsible for a high number of overdose deaths in the US every year. Addiction is a completely preventable condition. No one should have to die as a result of their addiction. Any addict who does ceases to be a son, daughter, mother, or father but instead becomes a mere statistic of our nation’s massive drug crisis.

For more information on the opiate epidemic, visit https://www.narconon-suncoast.org/blog/narcan-resistant-fentanyl-found-in-pennsy...

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Shauna Krout

Clearwater, Fla.