Would You Trust Your Drug Dealer with Your Life?

There are certain people you have to trust to protect your life—your airline pilot, your surgeon, the person who teaches you to skydive and a few others. When you need one of these professionals, you try to choose the most qualified and certified one you can find. Should your drug dealer be grouped with other people you trust to preserve your life? These days, it’s more likely than ever before that what he sells you, could rob you of your entire future in seconds.

While drug abuse always brings the risk of overdose or adverse reactions like panic attacks, heart attacks and organ breakdown, when a drug dealer adds unknown, unpredictable drugs to the drugs he sells you—or if an unknown drug is substituted for the one you wanted—you truly don’t know what you are getting or what reaction you could have. And when there is a bad reaction or overdose, it’s not even possible to tell doctors what drug was taken. Unfortunately, it’s very common for drug buyers to receive a different product than the one that was wanted.

Drug dealer wants your money.

Basically, each time you make a purchase, you are entrusting your drug dealer with your health, your sanity and even your life. Is that a good idea? A drug dealer is already involved in a seriously criminal activity. There’s no reason to think that he has your health or well-being in mind. After all, if he loses you, there are plenty of other customers.

Riskiest Drugs and Combinations on the Market

Heroin, fentanyl and carfentanil

Heroin is already a potent opiate. But in some parts of the U.S., powerful prescription painkillers Fentanyl and Carfentanil have been found mixed into heroin supplies.

Fentanyl is now being illicitly produced in China and shipped to the U.S. where it is added to heroin supplies to cut costs and give the heroin more “kick.” But fentanyl is so powerful and kills so quickly, some people who overdose are being found with a needle still in their arm. Fentanyl has also been found in counterfeit pills that were supposed to be OxyContin.

Carfentanil is vastly more powerful and is normally used only to immobilize large animals like elephants. It has recently has been found in heroin supplies in Ohio, Kentucky, Florida and Canada.

Ecstasy

This drug is popular at music festivals and dance clubs. But ecstasy—usually sold as a colored pill—is also famous for containing many other drugs than the one it’s supposed to—methylenedioxymethamphetamine or MDMA. While MDMA itself can kill a person through overdose, some other drugs that may be found in a supposed ecstasy pill are even more dangerous or addictive. Seized MDMA pills have actually contained cocaine, ketamine, methamphetamine or bath salts.

Synthetic drugs

There are more than 450 different chemical formulas in this category. These are drugs that came from a lab, not an opium field or marijuana grow. Chemically, they fall into these categories: synthetic cannabinoids, cathinones, tryptamines and piperazines. As far as the consumer goes, they could be described as Spice, bath salts, BZP, methylone, JWH-081, 251-NBOMe, Bromo-DragonFLY, Smiles or many other designations and nicknames. The dangers of using these drugs are many. One never knows which of these 450 formulas will be delivered when a purchase is made. Some people use one of these drugs and suffer injury or death due to a psychotic episode or they simply have a bad reaction to the drug and die.

Dropper bottles containing N-BOMe.
Dropper bottles are used to distribute 251-NBOMe. (Photo courtesy of the DEA.)

Marijuana

This is, of course, the plant many people think is harmless. Not only could the supply your dealer provides be contaminated with fungus, pesticides and heavy metals, it is not uncommon for marijuana to be mixed with PCP, embalming fluid or codeine-based cough syrup. These combinations are often prepared by the user but there are reports of these combinations being unexpectedly purchased from dealers. There was even a batch in Vancouver that had fentanyl mixed in.

Some users also report testing positive for methamphetamine or cocaine after only smoking pot (they thought). One can only think that the drug dealers mixing these other drugs into marijuana may be wanting to give their customers a taste for more addictive and expensive products.

It’s never easy to convince a drug user of the life-threatening risks he’s taking. But frankly, there’s never been a more deadly array of drugs on the market nor a better time for an addicted person to seek rehab. With so many addictive and lethal drugs on the market, the only safety is in sobriety.


Resources

AUTHOR
KH

Karen Hadley

For more than a decade, Karen has been researching and writing about drug trafficking, drug abuse, addiction and recovery. She has also studied and written about policy issues related to drug treatment.

NARCONON OJAI

DRUG EDUCATION AND REHABILITATION