Baltimore Probes Spate of Fentanyl-Laced Drug Deaths

Baltimore is investigating a spate of drug overdose deaths in its Penn North neighborhood, and National Institute of Standards and Technology tests have revealed the N-methylclonazepam sedative to be mixed with fentanyl, The Washington Post reported.

Baltimore has seen nearly 700 overdose deaths in the past year alone, leading to the investigation of the source drug N-methylclonazepam, a benzodiazepine not approved for human use in the U.S., according to the report.

The drug cocktail has not been found in other samples from Maryland or any of the 15 states partnering with the NIST, the Post reported.

Benzodiazepine is common in valium and klonopin. Like opioids, they lower heart rate and suppress breathing. When laced with fentanyl, there is an increase in the risk of fatal overdose, according to the report.

"There are an infinite number of things that could show up in the drug supply," Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Kristin Schneider told the Post. "Some of them have been around forever, some pop up and then disappear.

"It's that volatility in the drug supply that is one of the major contributors to overdoses, because there's not any consistency that people who use drugs can rely on to know what to expect and how to dose."

That variability makes emergency room treatment difficult in dealing with the unknown, potentially further fueling the fatality rate, according to University of Maryland Medical Center Dr. Cheyenne Falat.

"We commonly encounter overdoses in which we never end up knowing what the exact combination of substances is," she told the Post. "We often don't know how quickly the effects came on, how severe the effects may be, and how quickly the effects wear off."

In fact, giving a patient naloxone might even have deleterious effects, she added.

"It can be hard to tell whether it's uncovering another component of the drug or if it's an opioid withdrawal symptom," she told the Post.

First responders tend to learn how to treat overdose patients based on what's killing people locally.

"A few years ago, we started to see batches of overdoses with really prolonged low heart rates," Falat said, pointing to the past veterinary tranquilizer xylazine in Baltimore street drugs.

Democrat-run cities are getting proactive in investigating the fatal drugs with programs like Baltimore's Check It van, which takes samples from residue from discarded pipes or syringes used by the addicts.

"For something like what happened in Penn North, it would be really useful to know what a strong dose looks like relative to the average for a time and place," Schneider told the Post.

Philadelphia is investigating a "bad batch" of street drugs in a similar fashion.

"We want to know what's in it, yes," Philadelphia's Savage Sisters Recovery founder Sarah Laurel told the Post. "But we also want to know the corner where it was sold, we want to know what it was sold as."

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