New Opioid Found on Gulf Coast

A new opioid called “gray death” has been reported in the Gulf Coast region, and also in Georgia and Ohio. While gray death is not yet a national problem, it has the potential to be extremely dangerous to the already growing opioid epidemic in the US.

Gray death “looks like concrete mix and can contain everything from heroin to fentanyl to carfentanil to a synthetic opioid called U-47700, according to the Associated Press” (Blakinger, 2017). The exact combination of drugs found in gray death is not known yet, but either way it is a powerful concoction.

“It’s mad science and the guinea pigs are the American public,” stated Russ Baer of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA; Blakinger, 2017). Deneen Kilcrease, from Georgia’s Bureau of Investigation, said, “Gray death is one of the scariest combinations that I have ever seen in nearly twenty years of forensic chemistry drug analysis” (Blakinger, 2017).

Over the course of three months Georgia has seen at least fifty overdoses from the drug.

References

Blakinger, K. (2017). New opioid cocktail called ‘gray death’ threatens gulf coast. Retrieved from https://www.thefix.com/new-opioid-cocktail-called-gray-death-threatens-gulf-coast