Australian Fentanyl Deaths Are Up 1,800 Percent

You might think of super-opiate Fentanyl as an American thing, but we’re dealing with it too. Recent figures from the National Coronial Information Service (NCIS) show an 1,800 percent increase in Fentanyl related deaths. From January 2010 to December 2015 we saw 498 official Fentanyl-related deaths across Australia, compared to 130 in the five years before.

As the president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners explained to the ABC, we're currently facing a “national emergency.”

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid at between 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine. According to the Australian Drug Guide, the drug is traditionally prescribed for chronic pain as a result of cancer, nerve damage, back injury, or surgery, but it's fallen onto the black market as opiates do.

In the US, prescription opiates have ravaged disadvantaged rural areas, prompting President Trump to declare a public health emergency. "As Americans we cannot allow this to continue," he said in a speech at the White House in October.

In the US, it’s increasingly agreed that aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical companies throughout the 1990s and 2000s hooked millions on opiates. Purdue Pharma in particular were instrumental in boosting Oxycontin prescriptions for non-cancer patients, seeing user numbers explode from 670,000 in 1997 to 6.2 million by 2002.

And in 2007, while the US was already seeing the effects of this ethics-free profiteering, Australia loosened our own prescription guidelines so drugs like Fentanyl reached a wide range of non-cancer suffering patients. And according to a 2015 study from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, the number of Australians receiving treatment for dependence on opioids have tripled since those guidelines were modified.

Today, although people aged over 80 account for the majority of the prescriptions, it’s Australians under the age of 40 who account for the majority of overdoses. Because as one 26-year-old Fentanyl addict told us, prescription drugs are seen by lots of young people as “a safe alternative to heroin.”

“I got hooked on OxyContin after a work accident,” Alex* told VICE. “I was at home a lot and just kept eating them and upping my dose. Then the doctor stopped giving them to me and I found a dealer through mutual friends who taught me how to pull Fentanyl. On the street, it’s a cheaper option to high mg Oxies and lasts longer. You essentially get more for your buck.”

However, regulations around opioid prescriptions still vary from state to state and require a more robust consistent approach. Prescription monitoring systems also vary according to each state with Tasmania being cited as a blueprint for the future, a cohesive funded approach at the commonwealth level is ultimately required.

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*Name was changed because the contact was worried they'd lose their job.