Georgia District 10 Representative Mike Collins tackled at least part of the country’s growing synthetic drug problem head on July 12, as he urged the U.S. House of Representatives to take up the Senate’s amended version of H.R. 1734, also known as the TRANQ Research Act.
Among these synthetic opioids is Fentanyl, a potent drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use as an analgesic (pain relief) and anesthetic. Fentanyl can be up to 100 times more potent than morphine and approximately 50 times more potent than heroin as an analgesic.
“So far in Fiscal Year 2023, Border Patrol intercepted 20,000 pounds of Fentanyl – enough to kill 4.6 billion people. Zylazine, also called TRANQ or the ‘Zombie Drug,’ is a veterinary tranquilizer and Fentanyl analog that is wreaking havoc on American communities and putting law enforcement officers at risk,” Collins said in a brief speech delivered last Wednesday on the House floor.
“Our federal and local law enforcement officers are working hard to keep our communities safe at great personal risk and they need the tools to identify these drugs in order to safely encounter them in the field.”
Within the ongoing opioid epidemic, synthetic opioids like Zylazine, which mimics Fentanyl, have become a major problem. Approximately 57,800 people in the United States died from synthetic opioids in 2020. The number increased to more than 71,200 U.S. deaths in 2021 and estimates suggest last year’s death toll exceeds 80,000 nationally.
Synthetic opioids are produced in laboratories and the main issue with them is their very wide usage, both legally and illegally. For instance, Fentanyl was created and developed as a legal pharmaceutical in 1959, to be used in pain management for cancer patients or in emergency departments for those suffering from severe injuries such as ruptured brain vessels or third-degree burns. It can be administered through a patch, orally as a pill or lozenge, or nasally as a spray.
Illegally, real Fentanyl can be obtained through fraudulent prescriptions or from patients selling their prescriptions, but most frequently it is replicated and mixed with more expensive drugs like cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. This enables illicit drug dealers to extend their supplies, thus increasing their sales volume and value.
Unfortunately, when buying almost any drug off the street, the risk exists that Fentanyl has been added to increase the quantity. Where mild anesthetics and even baby powder were sometimes used in the past to “cut” other drugs, Fentanyl has largely taken over.
At up to 90% less expensive than heroin and relatively difficult to detect and isolate, Fentanyl unfortunately is ideal for cutting opioids. Sadly, however, the human cost of this is a growing number of Fentanyl overdoses – often fatal – involving these other drugs.
In 2020, nearly 20,000 people overdosed on cocaine with that number increasing to more than 24,500 in 2021. The same thing happens when people overdose on methamphetamines, with the number of meth overdoses increasing from almost 25,000 in 2020 to nearly 33,000 the next year. Many, if not most of these overdoses were related to synthetic opioids.
Collins’s bill, which passed the House unanimously in May, is intended to help understand the health and crime problems posed by synthetic opioids and ultimately reduce their availability.
“This commonsense legislation directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology to conduct research on the detection and handling of the newest, most dangerous synthetic opioids,” Collins said in his House speech. “Detection capabilities will extend to police officers, border patrol agents, and other first responders so they are better equipped to stem the flow of deadly drugs coming into our country and keep themselves safe while doing it."