A new class of highly potent synthetic drugs called orphines is aggravating the ever-evolving opioid crisis in the U.S. Orphines have led to numerous overdose deaths this year, and experts say removing them from the street, or even identifying them in communities, could be extremely difficult.
Orphines were “created in the 1960s” as part of an effort to find “rapid, safe pain relievers for surgery,” said The New York Times. They are at least “10 times more powerful than fentanyl, even in quantities no greater than a few sand-size grains,” and are increasingly ubiquitous as a street drug in the “wake of global crackdowns on fentanyl.”
Like fentanyl, orphines can be “lethal with stunning speed, with victims slumping over abruptly, respiration shutting down” and “chest walls rigid,” the Times said. Doctors and researchers are trying to find ways to stem their flow. But doing so is difficult, as it’s “not hard for labs to pump them out,” said The Hill.
As orphines continue to plague U.S. cities, medical examiners have “become frontline drug detectives, pressing to identify the new substances causing deaths,” said the Times. These drugs represent a “dangerous shift” in the opioid crisis, said Dr. Rachel Wirginis, an addiction and family medicine doctor at the Oklahoma State University Addiction Recovery Clinic, in a press release. Physicians are “seeing increasingly powerful synthetic opioids that require rapid recognition and aggressive intervention to prevent fatal outcomes.” |
