More Americans are vaccinated and ready to hit the party circuit. If that night out includes cocaine or meth, the consequences can be deadly, as many drugs are increasingly laced with fentanyl.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The summer of vaccines is finally here, and many people are ready to party, some with recreational drugs. Recent reports, though, of cocaine laced with fentanyl are raising concerns that the consequences could be deadly. From member station WNYC, Caroline Lewis reports.
CAROLINE LEWIS, BYLINE: Nowadays, a trendy club in Queens, is known for its marathon dance parties. But on a Thursday night in June, friends gather under the twinkle lights in the venue's sprawling backyard for a different reason. They're here to learn how to use naloxone, a nasal spray that reverses overdoses from opioids.
ELENA ROTOV: So the No. 1 thing is unresponsiveness. If somebody is responsive, they are not overdosing.
LEWIS: Tonight's training is led by Elena Rotov, the Naloxone coordinator at a harm reduction center in Brooklyn. About three dozen people listen raptly as she explains how to spot an overdose.
ROTOV: Snoring or gurgling sounds - that's a big one.
LEWIS: The training was organized by a group of nightlife and health care professionals called Last Night a DJ Saved My Life. Twenty-seven-year-old Nicholas Grubbs is here with friends.
NICHOLAS GRUBBS: I've heard a handful of horror stories in the past couple of weeks.
LEWIS: Grubbs says people in the nightlife scene he's a part of don't typically use opioids like heroin or fentanyl, but people do dabble in cocaine and other drugs.
GRUBBS: These parties are just coming back, and I've already heard three or four different circumstances in which people have overdosed or in which people have tested their drugs and they've tested positive for having fentanyl in them.
LEWIS: Still, some who showed up at Nowadays wanted to know, how worried should they be? National drug testing data showed that a relatively low percentage of the cocaine seized by law enforcement contains fentanyl or other synthetic opioids. But the mixture has become more common. In 2016, less than 1% of the cocaine samples tested by the Drug Enforcement Administration contained synthetic opioids. In 2020, it was over 3%. That may not sound like much, but if you haven't built up a tolerance for opioids, they can be especially dangerous. So why are dealers mixing fentanyl with cocaine at all, since the two drugs have opposite effects?
BRYCE PARDO: These are not pharmacists. They're doing this, you know, in their kitchen, or they're doing it on a coffee table.
LEWIS: That's Bryce Pardo, a drug policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. He suspects dealers sometimes combine the drugs by accident.
PARDO: They're mixing white powders with white powders, sometimes using, like, you know, an off-the-shelf blender.
LEWIS: His theory isn't too far-fetched. Fentanyl has become ubiquitous in recent years since it's cheap to make and highly addictive. It's often intentionally cut into heroin. And there's another concern - people might also buy it in counterfeit pills sold as Xanax. But researchers say it's still unclear what's driving the recent rise in overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids and cocaine. Pardo wonders, is it mostly unsuspecting cocaine users getting spiked drugs, or is it people intentionally using more than one substance to get high?
PARDO: We need to do interviews with dealers and users to kind of get a better sense as to what's happening here.
LEWIS: In some places, there might actually be demand for the coke-fentanyl combo. Dina Karieh is co-director of programs at St. Ann's Corner of Harm Reduction in the Bronx - the part of New York City with the highest rate of unintentional overdose deaths.
DINA KARIEH: What we're seeing is two different types of people. We're seeing the usual cocaine users, and then we're seeing heroin users who probably don't have access to their usual supplies, maybe due to COVID or maybe something else. And so they are seeking fentanyl-laced cocaine.
LEWIS: But Karieh says those people are still in the minority. For now, groups like Last Night a DJ Saved My Life will continue to give out naloxone and encourage people to test their drugs. For NPR News, I'm Caroline Lewis in New York.
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