States are rushing to stop the spread of a new synthetic drug that’s contributed to at least 50 deaths across the nation. In St. Joseph, authorities said synthetic drugs are not a new problem.
“There’s a lot of these chemical compounds that are out there that are very similar in chemical make-up with other illicit drugs that are out there,” said Sgt. Larry Stobbs with the St. Joseph Police Department.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation sent out a warning to the public at the beginning of the month to talk about the use of synthetic opioid U-47700. Johnson County, Kansas, District Attorney Steve Howe said two deaths in his county have been connected to U-47700. The new synthetic drug can be purchased online and is nearly eight times more potent than morphine. KBI said parents and caregivers should be watchful of packages and mailing labels that indicate a shipment from overseas, particularly China.
“Some of these compounds like this newest drug that’s out has got some tragic consequences because it’s actually killing people,” Stobbs said.
He said the best thing parents can do is to try and make it a point to know what’s going on in their kid’s lives.
“Several years ago there was a little fad in certain communities of kids buying the bonsai plants and were buying the supposedly fertilizer that went on them but it was a ruse,” Stobbs said. “You bought the plant so mom and dad would think you were trying to grow this cute little bonsai plant and actually the stuff they were buying that was being marketed as a fertilizer was actually the stuff they were smoking to get high on and that way mom and dad didn’t know what was going on.”
He said many different types of synthetic opioids are a concern around the St. Joseph community.
“We’ve got a lot of people here in the region that make this stuff and sell it. They’ve got their sources. It’s like anything else, if you know somebody that sells marijuana they probably sell this stuff also,” Stobbs said. “This is an ongoing problem we have in our community. It may not be one of our bigger drug problems, we have a lot of marijuana, we still have a lot of meth, we still have other drugs that are starting to pop up in our community this is just one on the smorgasbord that’s out there of the drugs we have. But unfortunately, this is probably one of the more dangerous ones.”
He said the synthetic drugs could actually be more harmful.
“The first responders and the people at the emergency room in a lot of ways it’s hard for them to figure out what to do with you because they’re not sure how that compound is interacting with your body to help get you back on the right track and help save your life,” Stobbs said. “From a law enforcement standpoint we encourage people to stay away from drugs because we don’t want to have people dying in our community because they’ve overdosed.”
(AP contributed to information in this story)