Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Fentanyl landing in California

Fentanyl is increasingly showing up in drugs in California. Although California has avoided the worst of the opioid epidemic, the drug market is dominated by stimulants — the very drugs that have started to be mixed with fentanyl. California has the seventh lowest drug-overdose death rate in the nation, partly due to the type of heroin sold.
Black tar heroin is sold west of the Mississippi. In the East it's a white powder. Black tar heroin is harder to mix with fentanyl so less likely to cause overdoses and deaths, but that advantage could fade. In the last year in Southern California federal agents have repeatedly made seizures of cocaine with fentanyl, methamphetamine with fentanyl and ketamine with fentanyl.