Cocaine deaths are on the rise

For a while opiates have been the leading cause of drug-death concerns, so that’s the drug in the headlines, but it appears cocaine deaths are on the rise. The reason, though, might be a combination of cocaine and Fentanyl (a very powerful opiate). One reason to suspect Fentanyl as the cause of increased deaths from cocaine use is that the number of cocaine users has remained steady for the past few years while the number of deaths is rising. But increased production in South America suggests cocaine use might soon rise.

This is an excerpt from a Pacific Standard article (this article is a year old, but new studies will likely come out this year to corroborate the predictions):

Farmers in Colombia—the source of more than 90 percent of the cocaine seized and tested by the United States’ Drug Enforcement Administration—have been ramping up their coca planting and now seem ready to produce cocaine in unprecedented amounts. “Potential pure cocaine production in Colombia has reached the highest levels ever recorded,” DEA analyst Leah-Perle Bloomenstein said during a public talk in February.

The danger of using cocaine now is it might be mixed with Fentanyl, and if a user doesn’t have a tolerance to opiates they can easily overdose. Drug dealers compete to capture the market, and as they try to develop a higher high, users suffer and some die. Cocaine is an intense high — mixed with Fentanyl it might create too much of a high, causing the user to take in more than the body can tolerate.

We’ve seen an uptick in cocaine clients. For a while I thought cocaine use would subside substantially, but it appears that’s not the case. Drugs like cocaine and opiates seem to cycle in popularity — now they’re combined, and the results will not be good. If you or someone you know has a problem, please call for help.