Carolina Gomez Mena
La Jornada Newspaper
Saturday, November 16, 2024, p. 11
One kilo of fentanyl generates half a million fatal doses, but criminal groups can obtain many more, up to double, said doctor specializing in pharmacology and addictions, Silvia Cruz Martín del Campo, who stressed that it is important for the population to understand that this Opioid is made to adulterate drugs such as heroin and does not have a pharmaceutical formulation.
Due to the above, Under no circumstances should we leave due to the prohibition of opioid medications, which are essential. When it is said that fentanyl kills, and that is only what we hear, when we arrive at the hospital and sign that we received fentanyl, what are we going to suffer? That is why we must make the distinction between pharmaceutical fentanyl and street fentanyl.
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At the Additions and New Substances symposium, organized by the Monte Fénix Center for Higher Studies (CESMF), he indicated that there is not only one type of fentanyl. According to the International Narcotics Control Board there are around 150, including precursors and fentanyls.
María Elena Medina Mora, coordinator of the UNAM Global Studies Seminar, which among other aspects analyzes the consumption of fentanyl, commented that since approximately 2018 It entered Mexico through the northern border, and criminal groups began to mix it with heroin
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He highlighted that The advantage for those who sell fentanyl is that it is a substance that is microsmall. You can have several doses on the tip of a pencil. It does not have the heroin problem that opium must be planted and converted into that drug; It is a long process. Production in laboratories (of traffickers) is fast, as long as the precursors are available.
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Since it is a substance that can easily cause overdose, it is 50 times more powerful than heroin, the former director of the National Institute of Psychiatry, explained to The Day that in Mexico naloxone should be declassified as a dangerous substance because it reverses opioid overdoses.
This substance does not cause addiction; It allows the person to breathe and not die in a short time. The US version is inhaled; with heroin you need one dose and with fentanyl two.
He added that it has already been declassified in many countries. The World Health Organization has expressed that it should not be restricted, but in Mexico this has not happened. Here we have the medicine in injected form. A person with an overdose has to get a doctor who has prescriptions for controlled medications, then go to the pharmacy to buy it and then have someone inject it, it’s crazy, before that they already died
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José Manuel Castrejón, director of the CESMF, noted that if naloxone were more available, first responders could use this resource. In the United States, the police bring it and when they find someone with an overdose, they administer it and save their life; The time it takes to get to a hospital is deadly, but in Mexico it is still in the category of controlled substance
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