FENTANYL INCREASES DEATH TOLL IN DRUG USERS

Fentanyl, a powerful painkiller blamed for scores of deaths in metro
Detroit last spring, continues to kill drug abusers at an alarming
rate, health and law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

In Wayne County alone, fentanyl helped kill 15 people in October, the
county medical examiner's office says.

"Fentanyl is now part of the permanent mix, unfortunately," Wayne
County Executive Robert Ficano said.

White House drug czar John Walters, who is to visit Detroit today to
help open a public health facility, also plans to discuss the fentanyl
problem with local officials.

As reported in the Free Press in July, the drug's reach extended to
Detroit's suburbs and across generational, racial and income lines.

An analysis of 110 victims who died in Wayne County in the previous
nine months showed that roughly half those people with identified
addresses lived in the suburbs. More than half were ages 41 to 55.

White people accounted for two-thirds of those who died, and most were
men.

In May, the peak month with 32 deaths, Wayne County officials warned
the public about the drug, which is 80 to 100 times more powerful than
heroin. It's often mixed with heroin or cocaine on the street.

From September 2005 through this October, Wayne County linked 198
deaths to fentanyl.

In Oakland County, which also tracks Genessee County drug deaths, 75
overdoses were linked to fentanyl from September 2005 through November
2006. Chief toxicologist Gary Kunsman said the majority were in Oakland.

Macomb County has had about 20 fentanyl-related deaths in the same
time, but an unknown number of them can be attributed to abuse of
prescription fentanyl, Medical Examiner Daniel Spitz said.