Fatal Gray Death Opioid Makes its Way to Penn. Addicts
May 10--Gray death is a mixture of heroin and opioids so dangerous that just a miniscule grain can kill, according to drug experts.
The name for the drug refers to its appearance--a gray powder that almost looks like concrete mixture.
In what may be one of its first appearances in Pennsylvania, a Bethlehem woman was arrested last weekend and charged with dealing it from an apartment where three young children live.
"It's like playing Russian roulette, but this is with six bullets instead of one," said Dr. Kenneth Katz, an emergency room doctor at Lehigh Valley Health Network. "If this catches on, we're going to have a rash of large amounts of deaths."
Gray death is linked to at least 46 overdose deaths across the United States, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, and police and medical experts say the deadly chemical combination is a major public safety issue.
The DEA says gray death contains carfentanil, which is 10,000 times more potent than morphine and 100 times more powerful than fentanyl, and can be absorbed through skin contact or inhalation.
Dr. Indra Cidambi, medical director of the Center for Network Therapy in Middlesex, N.J., said the "endless combinations," including the amount and quality of the drugs found in gray death, expose users and first responders to a lot of unknowns.
"Gray death...is mixed with other synthetic opiates and chemicals that try and combine the highs obtained by multiple substances," Cidambi said.
She said standard first-responder techniques, including the use of opioid blockers like naloxone, "could be ineffective and this is what makes them so deadly."
Katz, the LVHN emergency room doctor, said it's critical the public be informed of the ever-changing array of synthetic and designer drugs.
"We are now dealing with an unknown and unregulated quantity and quality of these exquisitely potent drugs," Katz said. "And my philosophy is that the more lights that are turned on in the darkness, the harder it is to hide."
___ (c)2017 The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.) Visit The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.) at www.mcall.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
