United States: opiates like fentanyl are killing more Americans

Mixture of heroin and fentanyl pictured on a street in Philadelphia, Pa. In July 2021 © SPENCER PLATT / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

Singer Prince and rock star Tom Petty died from it.

Opiates like fentanyl are killing more and more Americans.

For many, these drugs were first prescribed by doctors as a pain reliever before becoming addicted.

According to the government, more than 100,000 people died of an overdose during the Covid-19 pandemic, between April 2020 and April 2021. The authorities are sounding the alarm.

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In just one year, opiates have killed one person every five minutes.

Unheard of in the United States.

Certainly, the Covid-19 pandemic has something to do with it.

Many Americans, in financial difficulty or for lack of access to healthcare, have turned to synthetic products sold on the Internet.

They are cheaper, but more dangerous.

According to the authorities, overdoses are mainly linked to the use of opiates which contain fentanyl, produced illegally in China and transported to the United States by Mexican cartels.

The latter make consumers believe that they are buying approved products.

► Listen again on RFI: The singer Prince died of an overdose of Fentanyl

The US drug agency seized more than 14 million counterfeit pills this year and the trend is on the rise.

Many young Americans buy them from sites like Snapshat or Tiktok.

To fight against this scourge, the US government is focusing on prevention and access to naloxone, an antidote that prevents overdose.

Federal authorities want to encourage states to distribute this product free of charge in prisons and schools.

But it is not sure that this is enough to curb the consumption of what

The New York Times

daily

calls "

 the opium of the people 

".

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