Officials seized more than 115 million pills containing fentanyl in 2023. The opiate is often mixed with street drugs and linked to overdoses.
Counterfeit fentanyl pills are being seized by law enforcement in the United States at an unprecedented rate. A study published May 13, 2024, in the International Journal of Drug Policy indicated that more than 115 million pills containing illicit fentanyl were seized by US law enforcement in 2023.
The researchers behind the study said the number had grown from 71 million pills in 2022 and 50,000 pills in 2017.
The counterfeit fentanyl pills are made to look like legal prescription opioid medication — such as oxycodone and tramadol — but are often far deadlier than the originals.
“Fentanyl in pill form is now beginning to dominate the drug supply [in the US]. Pills are easy to ship and disguise and can also be marketed easily, as Americans have a reputation of loving their pills,” said the study’s lead author Joseph Palamar of NYU Langone Health in the US.
Anybody watching back the hit TV series, E.R., observe how earlier in the series during an emergency the docs would ask the nurses for administration of “Oxy” and “Hydro” and later in the series they would ask for “Fent”.
Street names.
Tell me the producers of those drugs did not pay off the producers of the show to fit that in.
Highly addictive drug product placement.
Unreal.
I don’t think drug manufacturers want their products associated with pill-seeking addicts. A simpler explanation is that the show reflects reality.
There wasn’t the opioid epidemic we now have when those episodes came out. Those drug companies making synthetic were just getting started.
And there’s no reality. Patient comes in unconscious from an unknown malady and Stamo’s character is like, “Chem 7, CBC, Fent lollipop!”