Op-Ed: Fentanyl pill producers used to mimic other pharmaceuticals, now they don’t have to
As a pharmacist, I have heard horror stories about people using prescription medications to sell illicit pills on the streets. It is a problem that plagues not only the industry but also law enforcement agencies.
The biggest problem may be that of counterfeiters who have found a way around the complex system that manufactures drugs. The result is that counterfeiters can now produce very similar looking drugs to those that their real counterparts are manufactured with.
Since the late 90s, the opioid epidemic has taken over a large portion of the world’s population. The United States is no different, and as I am sure you all know, fentanyl is the major culprit this century. It has become a life-threatening problem that has infected almost every state in the country, but there is good news.
In my opinion, fentanyl is still the most dangerous of the opioid drugs that are on the market. This chemical is so potent that it kills a person in seconds. In fact, it is on the federal government’s list of Schedule II controlled dangerous substances.
This chemical has been around for a long time, the most famous being the compound known as opium. This opioid was originally extracted from the opium poppy plant, but it has since been widely used as a pain-reliever for centuries.
Fentanyl is not an extracted opium, and that is where the problem lies. Fentanyl can be made from a variety of sources. The most common source is the chemical “Fentynal-S” produced by a synthetic company called Apotex. This chemical is composed of pseudoephedrine and aniline, two chemicals that are widely used in the production of pain medication.
But in the 1990s, the opioid that everyone is talking about became more famous around the globe. They said it only came from China, but now we think that it is from India. Regardless of the