Fentanyl

Background: Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic and short-acting painkiller that is 50- 100 times more potent than morphine,1 meaning that 1/10th of a gram of fentanyl is equivalent to between 5-10g of morphine*. It was first synthesized by Dr. Paul Janssen in December 19602,3 and has become one of the world’s most important and frequently used opioid analgesics, used also as a pre-medication for general anaesthetic, partly because of its rapid action and multiple routes of administration. While pharmaceutical fentanyl can be diverted for misuse, cases of fentanyl-related mortality in the US have been linked to illicitly manufactured fentanyl and a variety of fentanyl analogues.4 These newly-synthesized fentanyls are being sold as a standalone product, as a low-cost additive to increase the potency of heroin and even as counterfeit medicines.5,6,7 The overdose death rate from synthetic opioids (excluding methadone but including fentanyl and tramadol) continues to increase in the US with a 72.2% increase from 2014 to 2015, with a total of 9,580 deaths in 2015.8 

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