Marijuana laced with FENTANYL is rising across US, doctors warn as drug cocktail is found in New York, Alabama, Illinois and Louisiana

By: Caitlin Tilley, Health Reporter for DailyMail.com

Marijuana laced with fentanyl is rising across the US, a Washington doctor has warned, after cases of the drug cocktail were found in New York, Alabama, Illinois and Louisiana.

Fentanyl, a highly potent synthetic opioid that’s 100 times stronger than morphine and 50 times stronger than heroin, is increasingly being mixed with other substances to make them more potent at a cheap price.

Just two milligrams of fentanyl – imagine 10 to 15 grains of table salt – can prove fatal, and staggering figures showed it is killing the equivalent of an entire classroom of children every week.

It is thought that fentanyl has been mixed with marijuana flowers and THC gummies to increase the intensity of the high, and comes amid a a wave of marijuana legalizations across the country that has sparked competition over who can get the most potent strain of the drug.

Dr Michael Wenzinger, a staff psychiatrist at Washington University School of Medicine, told KTVI Fox2 on Sunday: ‘In my clinical practice and among some of my peers, we’re seeing more kids reporting they thought they were just smoking marijuana, when drug screens show fentanyl — and they would have toxicological, or medical side effects consistent with that.’

He added that marijuana itself has gotten stronger in recent years.

Dr Wenzinger said: ‘This is sort of turning into an unintentional experiment of, “How does this high potency marijuana affect young people?”‘

He added: ‘The marijuana they may be used to from their childhood is not what we’re dealing with now. We’re dealing with an almost different ballgame of potency.’

The THC concentration — the major psychoactive part of cannabis — rose more than 200 percent from 1995 to 2015.

One worry is that mental health conditions could be made worse.

Schizophrenia cases in men aged between 21 and 30 could have been preventable by up to 30 percent without consistent marijuana use, a study published this month in the journal Psychological Medicine found.

And now there is the new phenomenon of marijuana being laced with fentanyl. Whether mixed on purpose or on accident by dealers, it is raising concerns.

Police have claimed to find marijuana laced with fentanyl in Alabama, Illinois, Louisiana and New York.

If the drugs are being made in the same area, traces of the opioid could contaminate the weed supply.

A man was charged with murder in November 2022 after allegedly selling marijuana laced with fentanyl in Leeds, Alabama.

The 31-year-old man who took the contaminated marijuana died after ingesting it.

In Illinois, North Mac school district started a campaign to warn students against illegal drug-taking after two students used marijuana mixed with fentanyl.

The youths’ marijuana was tested twice by Virden police and it was found to contain the powerful opioid.

It is almost impossible to know if a drug has been laced with fentanyl without using fentanyl test strips as you cannot see, taste or smell the opioid.

Fentanyl-laced marijuana and pills were seized in Louisiana by police in January 2023.

Detectives found roughly 7.5 grams of marijuana that tested positive for fentanyl, 450 counterfeit Oxycodone tablets that had fentanyl in, 11 tablets of suspected Ecstacy and 28.95 grams of suspected cocaine.

And in April 2019, marijuana confiscated in a Walmart parking lot in Thompson, New York was found to also contain fentanyl.

Meanwhile, the district attorney in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia, said in February this year that police had discovered THC gummies containing fentanyl which had caused two non-fatal overdoses.

Last October, the Summerville Police Department in South Carolina warned that it had ‘seized marijuana that has tested presumptive for amphetamines and fentanyl’.

It said in a warning to the public: ‘The laced marijuana was seized during two apparent drug overdose investigations and it is possible the laced marijuana played a factor in the overdoses. We are asking the community to stay safe and to be careful.’

Fentanyl is flooding into the US from Mexico and China and is relatively easy to smuggle across the border.

It is also cost effective for dealers to mix it into their supplies, which saves them money and can extend or boost the high experienced by users.

Dr Wenzinger said parents should be made aware that the drug is totally different to what they might have smoked as teenagers.

While not wanting to spark panic, he said parents should talk about the risks of marijuana use with their children amid the wave of legalizations.

One mom claimed her ‘straight-A’ schoolboy son had been left brain damaged after bullies forced him to smoke a marijuana vape that turned out to be laced with deadly fentanyl.

Lynda Amos said son Zach Corona, both from Dalton, Georgia, will ‘never be the same again’ as she claimed the vape, which was hidden in his underwear, caused a stroke due to being laced with the drug.

The mom-of-five, 45, was shocked upon discovering her 13-year-old boy passed out on their living room recliner at 6pm on January 1 after complaining of chest pains.

Zach was found unconscious by 12-year-old sister Katie Amos, who first thought that her brother was ‘playing’ until she tried to tickle him and he was unresponsive.

Lynda quickly called an ambulance and Zach reached Children’s Hospital at Erlanger, Tennessee, half an hour later — where he flatlined minutes after arrival.

Doctors confirmed that Zach fell victim to a stroke and, after being resuscitated, he was put on life support.

Lynda had ‘no idea’ why her son had been left fighting for his life — until doctors cut off his clothes to find a vape pen laced with deadly opioid fentanyl, along with marijuana.

After waking from the coma over two weeks later, the 13-year-old claimed that he had been given the vape by a group of children, who made him smoke it in front of him.

Figures show the number of Americans who have marijuana in their system when they try to kill themselves is growing at an alarming 17 percent per year — and the trend is being fueled by a rise in young people.

On average, the marijuana of today contains three times as much THC — the psychoactive compound in weed that gets users and high and causes feelings of paranoia — as the strains enjoyed 25 years ago.

Zach was found unconscious by 12-year-old sister Katie Amos, who first thought that her brother was ‘playing’ until she tried to tickle him and he was unresponsive.

Lynda quickly called an ambulance and Zach reached Children’s Hospital at Erlanger, Tennessee, half an hour later — where he flatlined minutes after arrival.

Doctors confirmed that Zach fell victim to a stroke and, after being resuscitated, he was put on life support.

Lynda had ‘no idea’ why her son had been left fighting for his life — until doctors cut off his clothes to find a vape pen laced with deadly opioid fentanyl, along with marijuana.

After waking from the coma over two weeks later, the 13-year-old claimed that he had been given the vape by a group of children, who made him smoke it in front of him.

Figures show the number of Americans who have marijuana in their system when they try to kill themselves is growing at an alarming 17 percent per year — and the trend is being fueled by a rise in young people.

On average, the marijuana of today contains three times as much THC — the psychoactive compound in weed that gets users and high and causes feelings of paranoia — as the strains enjoyed 25 years ago.

Tilley (May 2023). Article Retrieved from DailyMail.com.