COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – Authorities are sounding the alarm about a new and deadly twist in the country’s drug-addiction crisis in the form of a potent painkiller disguised as other medications.
Tennessee officials say they’ve seen two dozen cases in recent months of pills marked as the less potent opiates oxycodone or Percocet that turned out to contain fentanyl, a far more powerful drug. One official likened the danger to users playing Russian roulette each time they buy a pill on the street.
In San Francisco, the health department blamed several overdoses last summer on lookalike Xanax containing fentanyl, while Canada has issued warnings about multiple recent cases of lookalike oxycodone pills containing fentanyl.
And in suburban Cleveland, federal agents arrested a man this month after seizing more than 900 fentanyl pills marked like oxycodone tablets.
“These pills are truly a fatal overdose waiting to happen,” said Carole Rendon, acting U.S. attorney in Cleveland.