U-47700: China Bans Four Synthetic Drugs

Synthetic Marijuana Synthetic Drugs

When talking about synthetic drugs, one of two things should come to mind: Dangerous chemicals used to make bath salts or synthetic cannabis; or powerful opioids such as fentanyl, carfentanil, and U-47700. Regardless of which we are talking about, they all have two things in common. They are deadly and are made in China.

To be sure, it is a fact that the United States makes up a small percentage of the world population. We also have safeguards in place providing oversight to protect people from dangerous substances and that we have more oversight than most countries. Yet, the people of America have the highest demand for drugs, especially opioids. Americans use the clear majority of the world’s prescription opioid supply, a problem of epidemic proportions. The problem has grown arms in recent years, with addicts branching out to illicit opioids like heroin.

But they are not just doing heroin. In many cases, the powerful opioid analgesic fentanyl is introduced to batches of heroin. In other cases, an even more deadly animal tranquilizer known as carfentanil is present in heroin. Over the last year there has been talk about another designer opioid, dubbed U-47700. Also, known as “Pink.” And like fentanyl, is made in laboratories in China to be sold to drug cartels an ocean away.

Reining In China’s U-47700

Until recently, China was doing little to combat the flood of synthetic drugs being made within its borders. Due to pressure from foreign governments, like our own, China is finally making efforts to curb the problem. They have already banned a number of chemicals that were being used to make synthetic marijuana. Now, they are going after synthetic opioids, like U-47700. Pressure from America has led to China agreeing to ban U-47700, Stat News reports. This follows the DEA’s move last year to add Pink to the list of Schedule I controlled substances. Drugs that have no accepted medical use and “a high potential for abuse.”

As of July 1, 2017, four compounds will be added to China’s list of controlled substances, according to the article. Including:

  • U-47700
  • MT-45
  • PMMA
  • 4,4′-DMARbe

While this is promising news, we are still faced with the reality that chemists will be quick to alter the formula. Allowing them to skirt the bans put in place by both American and Chinese officials. A trend that Yu Haibin, a division director at the Ministry of Public Security’s Narcotics Control Bureau, realizes fully.

“My feeling is that it’s just like a race and I will never catch up with the criminals,” Yu told a news conference. “Actually, we just want to make a breakthrough in dealing with this.”

Playing With Fire

If you are buying compounds like U-47700 over the internet, please be advised that there is no telling how chemists will alter the formula. Nor the side effects that will result from such a change. Synthetic drugs are highly unpredictable. They are addictive and can be deadly.

If you feel that you might be addicted to synthetic drugs, please contact 10 Acre ranch today. We can help you break the cycle of addiction and set you on the path of recovery.

Heroin Vaccine Shows Promise for Addiction

heroin spoon syringe

Alcohol and substance use disorders have no known cure. There is not a pill you can take that will rid you of addiction. There are programs that you can work that will enable you to abstain from use for long periods of time without the need of relapse. And if such programs are worked with vigilance and honesty, people can refrain from use for the rest of their lives.

There are, however, drugs that people can take to assist in abstaining from drug and alcohol use. Such as Antabuse, Acamprosate, Naltrexone and Buprenorphine. However, they will only mitigate the risk of a relapse. Antabuse will make alcoholics sick when they drink. Regarding buprenorphine, more commonly known as Suboxone, users are still taking a partial agonist opioid receptor modulator. Which causes euphoria. The point is that these drugs are not intended to cure addiction. They are meant to help people get on the road to recovery. And stay the course.

In the field of addiction medicine, we could easily argue that at no other time in our history has a vaccine for addiction been more needed. People are dying in scores every day of the week from opioid overdoses. Those who seek treatment for opioid use disorder have especially high relapse rates. And there is no indication that the reality we all find ourselves living in today is going to change. At least not anytime soon. Nevertheless, addiction researchers continue to search in earnest for one.

Heroin Vaccine On The Horizon

As we mentioned earlier, relapse rates among opioid addicts are particularly high. Thus, and so, the need to mitigate the risk of relapse without the use of other opioids like Methadone and Suboxone is great. Fortunately, researchers have been working on a vaccine that would block the euphoric feelings caused by opioid use, Live Science reports. By blocking the high, the vaccine will reduce people’s chance of becoming addicted in the first place and prevent those already addicted from relapsing.

“The vaccine sequesters the psychoactive molecules that heroin produces and prevents distribution to the brain,” said study first-author, Paul Bremer, a graduate student at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI).”It essentially uses your body’s own natural defense to neutralize the drug.”

Rather than cure addiction, the vaccine mimics part of the heroin molecule, according to the article. Conditioning the immune system to treat heroin molecules as foreign bodies. Disabling heroin’s ability to cross the blood-brain barrier, and thus preventing the high. Trials on monkeys have proven successful, the next step is clinical trials. If the vaccine works on humans, it could have huge implications for the future of opioid addiction in America. The researchers at TSRI are talking with biotech companies to develop a human clinical trial.

“I hope the vaccine will be useful in conjunction with other drugs,” said study leader Kim Janda, a chemistry professor at TSRI. “While there are treatments out there already, I think we need to look at other ways of fighting this problem. This could be another piece of the puzzle.”

Opioid Addiction Treatment

It will be some time before opioid users can rely on any vaccine. In the meantime, addiction treatment is the only real course of action for those whose lives have been turned upside down from opioid use. If you are an adult male who’s addicted to opioids, please contact 10 Acre Ranch today. Our center has helped a significant number of people with opioid use disorder break the cycle of addiction, and begin the life-saving journey of recovery.

Methamphetamine Related Overdose Deaths

Methamphetamine also known as crystal meth

Opioid overdose deaths are common. The family of drugs associated with the ever-rising death rates, causes severe respiratory depression. Simply put, a dose that is a little bit too much can cause individuals to stop breathing. Without intervention by way of the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone, there is a high likelihood of death.

The health care system in America has been put, arguably, to its greatest test in modern times. Hospitals emergency departments have been increasingly bogged down in the last two decades due to opioid use disorder and all that can come with it. Anything from potentially deadly infections, blood-transmitted disease and overdoses. One could say that all other health problems related to other types of drugs had become an afterthought. After all, you don’t hear much in the news these days about stimulants.

However, make no mistake about it, cocaine and methamphetamine while not typically associated with overdose, have not gone anywhere. Kilogram after kilogram of stimulant narcotics makes its way into the United States via the southern border. Trafficked by Mexican drug cartels whose ability to operate with relative impunity is very real. In Mexico can be found huge super laboratories manufacturing methamphetamine on a scale never seen before. The days of Americans buying all the Sudafed available in local pharmacies to make the drug in clandestine labs are seemingly behind us, due to government crackdowns. But in Mexico, the meth manufacturing business is booming.

Methamphetamine Is Still a Threat

A number of states have seen a resurgence in meth use, and federal officials fear that the problem is only going to get worse, KTOO Public Media reports. More and more people are using the drug, and many of them are dying from it. Not just the slow death of addiction, people are overdosing on the stimulant in Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma to Montana, Wisconsin and Minnesota and beyond.

“The beginning of the opioid epidemic was 2000 and we thought it was just localized,” said Kimberly Johnson, director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). “Now we know that drug outbreaks aren’t likely to stay localized so we can start addressing them sooner and letting other states know of the potential for it spreading.”

Meth Overdose

When most people think of the ugly side effects of meth use, they typically envision weathered looking individuals with bad skin and rotting teeth. This the result of the caustic chemical used to make the drug in inexpensive ways. Beneath the surface, methamphetamine addicts suffer from heart and kidney failure, according to the article. To be sure, the chance of an overdose from opioids is much greater than meth. Yet, people do, in fact, fatally overdose on methamphetamine.

Here are some numbers to consider. Around 3,700 Americans died of a meth-related overdose in 2014, more than double the number of deaths in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). If 3,700 deaths were not alarming enough, nearly 4,900 meth users died of an overdose in 2015, an increase of 30 percent.

Treating Stimulant Addiction

Are you struggling with meth addiction, please contact 10 Acre Ranch. We have helped a significant number of people break the cycle of meth addiction and go on to live a rewarding life in recovery.

Dark Web Drug Sales On The Rise

a man at a computer disguised as an anonymous wearing a mask working on dark web drug sales

Earlier this week, we discussed the important topic of synthetic drug use, a trend that is both dangerous and indicative of the ever-changing landscape of drug addiction in America. The people making these dangerous drugs are usually one step ahead of government organizations responsible for mitigating the impact of drug use across the country, such as the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

Part of the problem, or the difficulty, in policing synthetic drugs is that the chemicals that are sprayed on benign plant matter to make synthetic cannabis and salts to make “bath salts” are synthesized in China. An enormous country that lacks the kind of oversight that we find in our own country, at least when it comes to laboratories. While China has made efforts to curb the problem and commitments to the United States to do a better job at policing the manufacturing and distribution of such chemicals, the deadly chemicals are still being made and escaping the country’s borders.

In many cases, acquiring the chemical needed is as easy as opening a laptop and venturing into what is known as the “dark web.” Perhaps you have heard of the former online marketplace known as the Silk Road. If not, it was a website that operated in the darkest regions of the internet, a place where one can by heroin, passports and various chemicals to make drugs like synthetic marijuana.

The Dark Web

Once inside the Internet’s shadowy underworld, the possibilities are endless. What’s worse, people journeying into the dark web can do so anonymously, paying for goods and services with a virtually untraceable currency known as Bitcoins. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been working tirelessly to shut down black markets residing in the dark web.

In 2015 Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road was sentenced to life without parole after being arrested by the FBI. But as was mentioned earlier, the ever-changing landscape of drug use in America, such as buying drugs online, allows for others to do the same. Just as when a cartel head is arrested, another moves into a position of power. The Hydra Effect. Cut off one head, only to face another.

The sentence Ulbricht received was arguably harsh. While he got rich off illegal drug sales, et al., he wasn’t in fact the one selling the drugs. He just received a percentage of all sales. The stiff sentence was intended to deter others from creating similar dark marketplaces.

However, a new study published in the British Journal of Criminology, shows that in the two years since the Silk Road saw its end, Boston College sociologist Isak Ladegaard found that sales on the dark web actually increased, Wired reports. And the reasons for the rise in overall sales in the marketplaces that replaced Ulbricht’s site might be linked to a greater awareness in the public about online illegal drug sales due to the media coverage of the Silk Road.

“The timing suggests that people weren’t discouraged from buying and selling drugs,” says Ladegaard. “The data suggests that trade increased. And one likely explanation is that all the media coverage only made people more aware of the existence of the Silk Road and similar markets.”

A Dangerous Way to Buy Drugs

Setting aside the potential for arrest, buying drugs online could lead to the purchase of substance that might contain deadly ingredients. As was mentioned in other posts, fentanyl is often mixed with heroin to increase potency. The chemicals used to make synthetic drugs have unpredictable side effects, some of which can be deadly.

If you are addicted to drugs, seeking help is a lifesaving decision. Please contact 10 Acre Ranch today to end the cycle of addiction.

Addiction In America – War In Mexico

quarantine-isolation-alone-drug-use-addiction-recovery-southern-California-drug-rehab-detox

Much of the news these days is focused on the Middle East, with ISIS taking front and center as being many Americans’ biggest concern. We have all seen the devastation in Syria on television and on the front pages. The death toll is staggering. While every one of us should feel disturbed by the carnage caused by this civil war being fought overseas, it is important to remember that the drugs being used and abused by Americans also come with a heavy price.

People die in this country every day from addiction, both from overdoses and the damage done by years of abuse. But, we would be wise to remember that the drugs that feed the fire of the United States’ insatiable drug habit, come to us by a bloody road. The clear majority of illegal drugs used today in this country arrive via Central America—particularly through Mexico.

At any given time, or in any given year, several Mexican drug cartels vie for the power to fuel the fire of addiction raging just north of the border. And negotiations usually take the form of gunfire, not peaceful talks. As a result, a global survey has revealed that after Syria, Mexico has become the second deadliest conflict area in the world.

A War for Drugs

In 2016, there were 23,000 intentional homicides in Mexico. The smaller central American countries have not been left unscathed either, with 16,000 having been killed during the same time in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. But it is important to remember that the deaths are not always the result of one cartel or gang fighting another, in each of the aforementioned countries the military has been tasked with fighting the war against transnational drug trafficking. And the cartels themselves have military grade weapons.

“The death toll in Mexico’s conflict surpasses those for Afghanistan and Somalia. This is even more surprising, considering that the conflict deaths are nearly all attributable to small arms. Mexico is a conflict marked by the absence of artillery, tanks or combat aviation,” said John Chipman, International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) chief executive and director-general, in the statement.

The cartels, to be sure, are not going anywhere as long as there is demand. There are millions of Americans with untreated addiction. Each year, those same people spend billions of dollars to maintain the very habit that is, in fact, killing them. Billions of dollars which are destined to line the pockets of cartel bosses south of the border.

Every time a particular cartel or boss, like Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, is taken down there is always someone else to fill the void.

Treating Addiction is The Best Weapon

Encouraging people to seek help for addiction not only helps individuals, it helps society. Not just ours. Thousands of innocent Mexicans, with zero affiliation to the cartels, have lost their lives just because of proximity. By ending the stigma of addiction more people will begin to see that recovery is possible, that treatment does work. For too long substance use been viewed as a crime, and that the solution to the problem was incarceration. We know that wars on drugs have little effect on addiction rates, but on the other hand treatment has a huge effect.

If you or a loved one is battling an alcohol or substance use disorder, please contact 10 Acre Ranch today. We can help break the cycle of addiction, and start you down the most important road of life.

Fentanyl and Carfentanil Taking Lives

Book with fentanyl and test tubes

It would seem that we all live in an era where the drugs of our parents’ generation do not hold the same appeal. That is not to say that people no longer use cocaine, marijuana, speed and heroin (especially heroin); but rather, that the environment has changed dramatically and we live in a time when synthetic drugs are seemingly the biggest threat—at least with respect to posterity. Over the last decade, give or take, the media has flooded America with horror story after horror story, centered on synthetic analogs that are literally killing people.

First, it is important to make clear that the greatest problem regarding drug use today is centered around the American opioid addiction epidemic. A crisis of epic proportions that arose from what can only be called reckless overprescribing of prescription opioid painkillers. For nearly two decades both individual states and the Federal government have been reeling to find a way to reign in the scourge of opioid addiction that resulted from prescribing opioids for all things considered painful, whether that be a stubbed toe or back pain.

What started with pills prescribed legally, morphed into an even greater problem when crackdowns made it harder for already addicted Americans to acquire painkillers from a doctor. Such people did what any addict would do, looked to the black market for relief. A marketplace with zero-oversight and few concerns about patient wellbeing. Many pill abusers found that they could save money and actually achieve a greater high by making the switch to heroin. Thinking that prescription painkillers and heroin were both opioids, what’s the difference? The answer to which is, a lot!

Opioid Mystery Bags

Is it true that people die every day from prescription opioid overdoses? Yes. However, many of the overdose deaths today are the result of using heroin, and it isn’t just the heroin that is killing people. But rather what is mixed into the heroin, unbeknownst to users, in order to boost potency. For a number of years now, people have been dying of overdoses on heroin that is mixed with an extremely powerful synthetic opioid narcotic. One that is often resistant to the life-saving effects of the overdose reversal drug naloxone—sold under the brand name Narcan.

You may already have guessed that the synthetic being referred to is fentanyl. A drug commonly used in hospital settings for surgery and traumatic injuries which is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. The ingredients to make fentanyl can be acquired with relative ease from Chinese laboratories, and shipped overseas to cartels in Mexico. From there, the drug which causes severe respiratory depression is either stamped into pills disguised as other drugs (i.e. OxyContin) or it is mixed in with batches of heroin. Either way, by the time the fentanyl reaches people with opioid use disorder in the U.S., there is little way of knowing what is being consumed.

To make matters even worse, there are stronger analgesics also finding their way into the hands of American drug addicts, once again without their knowledge of the drugs’ presence. Interestingly, the more powerful drugs are analogs of fentanyl, but were never intended for human use.

Gray Death: A Fentanyl Admixture

In Alabama, Georgia and Ohio there has been a spate of deaths linked to dangerous opioid admixture, fittingly referred to as “Gray Death.” It was given the moniker because it looks like concrete mix, and causes overdose, the Associated Press reports. It is usually a mixture of heroin, fentanyl and carfentanil — an analog of fentanyl 10,000 times more potent than morphine, often used to tranquilize large animals like elephants. Sometimes another obscure synthetic opioid called U-47700, which has been associated with dozens of deaths, is added to the bags.

“Gray death is one of the scariest combinations that I have ever seen in nearly 20 years of forensic chemistry drug analysis,” Deneen Kilcrease, manager of the chemistry section at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

If you are actively abusing opioids, these combinations of drugs should be cause for concern. Around one hundred people die every day in this country just from abusing heroin on its own and prescription opioids. If you add something that includes elephant tranquilizers into the mix, then the stakes suddenly get much higher. If you think that you are buying heroin, there is no way of knowing until it’s too late. If you think that just because a pill has an OC stamped on the side and it is therefore OxyContin, it could in fact be something entirely different.

At 10 Acre Ranch, we strongly encourage you to consider reaching out for help. Entering substance use disorder treatment will end the risk of a fatal overdose and prevent the often slow death of active addiction. We can help you break the cycle and show you how to live a fulfilling life in recovery. Please contact us today.