Educational Articles

“Fentanyl has 40 times the potency of heroin and 80 times the potency of morphine.”

A Deadly Dose: Fentanyl IN THE African American Overdoses

it overseas. “People are always looking for anesthetics and pain killers, and fentanyl just is a very potent one.” Gilson believes drug dealers saw the opportunity to tap into a new market and introduced fentanyl to the minority community. “Cocaine is a stimulant, and fen- tanyl is a depressant. Mixing the two most seems like a business decision for people who make their living from hurting people through drugs, so fentanyl steadily in- filtrated the market.” While morphine and heroin are made from plants and require ideal growing envi- ronments, fentanyl is manufactured in laboratories, making production easier and faster. In light of the coronavirus pandemic, Gilson be- lieves there may have been some correlations be- tween 2020 overdose numbers and effects from the pandemic. “There was a spike in May, and that’s when many people received their first federal stimulus checks. That also fell around a time when many of the heavier stay-at-home restrictions were temporarily lifted. So there may have been a combination of people having extra mon- ey in their pockets and losing tolerance of being inside the house. It may have just been a perfect storm.” Gilson says risk reduction programs and efforts are the fu- ture of addressing these staggering numbers, as community leaders work to introduce greater numbers of Narcan kits to the community. They have also begun including fentanyl test strips with the distribution kits. “If someone is using drugs, knowing if it’s laced with fentanyl could modify their behavior and serve as a wake-up call to save their life.” Plans are also in place to expand county educational programs

Community

From 2020 reports, there were about 430 overdose deaths from fentanyl in Cuyahoga County, according to Medical Examiner Thomas Gilson. Of those, 117 were African American .

D uring the 1990s, the increasing se- verity of the prescription drug cri- sis did not primarily affect African Americans. “That may have been, in large part, because of the healthcare disparity or doctors’ approach to treating pain among Black people,” Gilson said. “But it was clear African Americans did not have the same issue with the epidemic as white suburban areas.” However, during that time and through to- day, crack cocaine has been the consistent drug of choice for users within the Black community. “It wasn’t until cocaine and fentanyl were wedded that we started see- ing the explosion of overdose deaths among African Americans from these drugs.”

was responsible for seven overdose deaths that year. In 2015, there were 25 deaths. By the end of 2017, that number had in- creased by four times. “We really started seeing fentanyl being added more in the African American community in 2016, and that was devastating.” When looking at the potency of opiates, ex- perts use morphine as the bas line for com- parison. Heroin has about four times the potency of morphine. Fentanyl, however, has 40 times the potency of heroin and 80 times the potency of morphine. Fentanyl was first introduced in the 1960s as an anesthetic or pain medication. Its use scaled as other pain medications also emerged onto the market. However, in 2015, the illicit drug market began using fentanyl and manufacturing

in schools. “We want to be in middle and high schools offering timely advice and discour- aging children from going down that path.”

A potent narcotic, the use of fentanyl first spread in the Black community in 2014 and