Fentanyl is the next wave of America’s opioid crisis

THE roadside billboards in some American towns do not advertise fast-food chains or home insurance. Instead, they tell people what to do in case of a drug overdose. Deaths in America from opioids, pain-relieving drugs that include both prescription painkillers such as OxyContin and illegal ones such as heroin, have almost quadrupled over the past two decades. In some states the share of babies who are born with withdrawal symptoms has increased by 300% since 1999; at least 8,000 were born suffering from them in 2013. Each day 91 Americans die from an opioid overdose.Much of this catastrophe stems from the over-prescription of legal painkillers. In 2015 some 650,000 prescriptions were handed out on an average day. But when prescriptions end, addicts sometimes turn to illicit substances. The latest one that worries experts is a synthetic opioid called fentanyl, which is around 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine. Most of the fentanyl making its way to America has been made, often legally, in factories in China before being shipped to criminal networks in Mexico and Canada and then smuggled over the border. Thousands of Americans have died from using fentanyl since 2013.