Carfentanil: Terrifying opioid 100 times stronger than fentanyl or ‘zombie drug’

Health professionals have raised alarm over a synthetic opioid available in Australia that has seen deaths double in the space of a few months.

Overdose deaths linked to a synthetic opioid 100 times stronger than fentanyl have more than doubled in New York City in the span of a few months.

Two new lethal sedatives have been detected for the first time in the city’s drug supply, the New York Post reports.

The two opioids have infiltrated the city’s cocaine and heroin supply leading city officials to issue a warning about carfentanil in particular – a sedative used on elephants.

A second opioid, medetomidine, is also an animal tranquilliser experts say is more potent than “zombie drug” xylazine.

Carfentanil – a substance that acts on opioid receptors and is primarily used for pain relief and anaesthesia.

The drug is already available in Australia, with Mandalong Sanctuary owner Jaan Jerabek thought to be the first Australian to suffer an overdose from using the drug recreationally.

The wellness guru overdosed in September 2017, with emergency services called to the retreat.

Mr Jerabek was rushed to Wyong Hospital after paramedics were forced to use a “s**t tonne” of naloxone – an opioid reversing agent – to stabilise him and save his life.

He allegedly later told emergency staff he bought the drug off the dark web and had it posted to him through the mail.

Just a few months earlier, in late 2016, Australian Border Force (ABF) officials had detected a package containing carfentanil in a Sydney mail centre.

ABF NSW regional commander Tim Fitzgerald said at the time it was the first known detection of this substance at an Australian border.

Mandalong Retreat owner Jaan Jerabek, 43, is believed to be the first in Australia to overdose on the deadly new drug carfentanil. Picture: supplied.

Carfentanil use is on the rise and has been linked to seven fatal overdoses in NYC through June, more than double the three overdose deaths during the same period last year, according to preliminary data from city health officials and the Medical Examiner’s office.

Eight opioid samples obtained from across the borough of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan between March and June were found to be contaminated with small amounts of the deadly substance, in addition to fentanyl itself, health officials said.

Law enforcement has seen an increase in busts where the powerful drug has been found – with at least 35 cases between November and May, according to the Special Narcotics Prosecutor’s office.

Carfentanil is an opiate and a derivative of fentanyl. The drug is commonly used on elephants. It is 10,000 times more potent than morphine, making it among the most potent commercially used opioids.

“Considering that carfentanil is 100 times stronger than fentanyl, and the enormous number of lives fentanyl has claimed in our city, the mere presence of carfentanil in our drug supply is a matter of deep concern,” the Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G. Brennan told The Post.

In 2022, more than 3000 people died from fatal overdoses in New York City — the vast majority due to synthetic opioid use.

That’s a 12 per cent increase from the nearly 2700 drug-related deaths in 2021, according to health officials.

The majority of the carfentanil seizures over the past year have occurred in Brooklyn, followed by Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx, authorities said.

In almost all of the cases, the lethal drug had been mixed in with fentanyl as well as other substances.

A person lays on the street in downtown Portland, Oregon where hard drugs including fentanyl were decriminalised in 2021. Picture: AFP

Florida mother Terri Zaccone said she had never heard of the synthetic opioid until it killed her sons, Thomas Devito, 29, in 2017; and Paul Devito, 31, three years later.

“It destroys lives, it destroys the person who is in the act of addiction, it destroys their families,” Zaccone, 56, said of carfentanil, adding that Thomas left behind a daughter, Olivia, who is now 8.

“I’ll never be the same person I was after losing my children.”

Zaccone stressed that city officials should be spreading even more awareness to warn New Yorkers about the dangers of carfentanil — and focusing on getting addicts clean, rather than giving them free needles.

“Cocaine, heroin, it doesn’t matter what it is, it could be laced with [carfentanil] and just a tiny, tiny amount will kill them,” she said.

She said government officials need to make sober houses and detox programs “more affordable.”

A woman smokes a foil of fentanyl. Carfentanil, which is described as 1000 times stronger, is causing overdose deaths in the New York scene. Picture: AFP

City health officials revealed they also detected medetomidine in the drug supply for the first time, after testing an opioid sample from the Bronx in late June that also contained fentanyl.

Medetomidine, which causes the heart rate to plummet to dangerous levels, has ravaged communities nationwide in recent months. The sedative has been linked to mass overdose outbreaks in Philadelphia and Chicago, according to the Center for Forensic Science Research & Education, as well as at least three deaths in Michigan.

People, many with drug dependency issues, live on the street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in drug encampments. Getty Images via AFP

Like xylazine, the non-opioid sedative’s effects cannot be reversed by the drug naloxone, which has been used to counter fentanyl overdoses.

“This is not an overdose crisis, it’s not an addiction crisis — this is a supply that’s contaminated and out of control,” said David Frank, an associate research scientist at New York University.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CARFENTANIL

■ Carfentanil was first synthesised in a commercial Belgium lab in 1974

■ It was marketed as a general anaesthetic for elephants and other large animals

■ It was openly made in China where it was not a controlled substance until 2017

■ It is traded on the “dark web” and is a sought after narcotic because it only requires smallest of doses and it can be mailed through the post.

■ It can be taken as a nasal spray or a patch like nicotine replacement therapy.

■ The toxicity of Carfentanil has been compared to nerve gas.

■ It has been linked to the Moscow theatre hostage crisis in 2002 where 170 people died after Russian special forces pumped an “unknown” gas into the building to subdue armed Chechens. Naloxone was used as an antidote.

■ The substances is usually shipped from China and India to Central and South America, where cartels cut narcotics like cocaine and heroin with the drugs.

Cartels and street-level dealers “are mixing these lethal synthetics into their drug supply … to increase addiction, to increase their customer base, to make more money,” said Frank A. Tarentino III, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency’s New York Division.

“Then you introduce a more powerful fentanyl like carfentanil, or medetomidine, which is more powerful and more dangerous than xylazine, then you’re talking about even greater catastrophic overdoses and poisonings than we’re already seeing.”

“As we’re talking about fentanyl, Chinese companies are producing more powerful synthetic drugs,” Derek Maltz, former director of the DEA’s special operations division, said, citing other new classes of drugs like nitazenes.