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  • I'm going deep inside the fentanyl pipeline to see exactly how it's fueling the most devastating drug epidemic in U.

  • S.

  • History.

  • Yeah, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine, making it the most potent narcotic in clinical use.

  • I'm hoping, really, really hoping that God knows what he's doing here.

  • The drug acts on natural opioid receptors or pleasure centers in the brain.

  • Our bodies opioid receptors are found in the same parts of the brain that control emotions and physical pain.

  • The drug takes over these receptors, believing pain and creating a state of euphoria.

  • But abusing these receptors are dangerous and even deadly opioid abuse can lead to respiratory depression or slow and shallow breathing, which can be fatal.

  • The chief is in there trying to revive this patient.

  • There was a woman on the floor.

  • It was a no overdose.

  • She was overdosing.

  • Fennel was first created in Belgium in 1960 by Dr Paul Janson.

  • Janson was the founder of Janssen Pharmaceutica, which is now owned by Johnson and Johnson.

  • Fentanyl, like most opioids, was made with the purpose of helping patients relieved the most severe forms of pain from patients in surgery to patients battling cancer in hospital settings.

  • The drug became revolutionary for pain management during the early to mid 19 sixties, heart surgery was new, and previous types of anesthesia were causing cardiac arrests.

  • During surgery, researchers found that fentanyl had minimal effects on the heart and replaced morphine for cardiac anesthesiologist.

  • By the 19 eighties, Ben Tunnel was also faster, acting more potent, inexpensive to create and could be administered in a multitude of different ways.

  • Over time, prescription opioids became more popular.

  • US.

  • Pharmaceutical companies began marketing other opioids and assuring patients that the addiction risk was low.

  • Less than 1% of patients taking opioids actually become addicted.

  • But that wasn't the case.

  • Patients got addicted, and us was now dealing with an opioid epidemic.

  • Proximate cause for the prescription opioid epidemic in our state.

  • Our companies who marketed fraudulently the addictive qualities of the drug over two decades, Uh, in many cases knowing that there was a high probability that patients would become addicted when overdoses began to rise.

  • Doctors made these drugs more difficult to obtain.

  • But those already addicted turned to black market versions of these opioids like heroin by the 20 tens fentanyl was one of the deadliest drugs of abuse of the United States.

  • And in 2015 fentanyl traffic via Mexico emerged on the U.

  • S.

  • Black market in a big way.

  • In recent years, 200 people die per day from drug overdoses in the United States.

  • The most recent cases of fentanyl related harm overdose and death in the United States are linked to illegally made fentanyl, and it remains one of the most difficult drugs to stop is wiping out a generation.

  • Cool Oh!

I'm going deep inside the fentanyl pipeline to see exactly how it's fueling the most devastating drug epidemic in U.

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