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In the slang of drug dealers and consumers it is also called “China White”. A nickname that evokes the fact that Fentanyl or the ingredients to “cook” it are sold especially on Chinese sites, preferably on the deep or dark web, and can be purchased by sending them to your home via post after payment with cryptocurrencies so as not to leave traces. After the recent case in Perugia where the prosecutor’s office opened an investigation into Fentanyl which was found as a cutting substance in a dose of heroin recovered a few weeks ago in the area of the Umbrian capital, the Government raised the alert to third degree (communication of maximum urgency) takes stock of the monitoring activities of the first alert plan on Fentanyl wanted by Palazzo Chigi and launched on 12 March. A plan that sees the involvement of the police forces, the prosecutor’s offices but also the intelligence services.
Purchases on deep and dark web sites
«There is an international dimension to the fight against Fentanyl which passes first and foremost through monitoring the web which is the main route for the substance to enter Italy. In particular on the dark and deep web on Chinese sites above all, with payments in cryptocurrencies and shipping via post which means non-traceability and this makes investigations difficult and complex”. Thus the undersecretary to the Presidency of the Council Alfredo Mantovano, in a press conference at Palazzo Chigi. The undersecretary invited “families to be careful to ensure that teenagers avoid using these sites. The purchase can take place with actual prescriptions, with sale as a drug but also with disguised names: for example, Fentanyl is hidden behind the expression China White. The intelligence and police forces are working on this aspect.” «The National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor’s Office – Mantovano further informed – has set up a working group made up of some district prosecutors to develop intervention protocols. All prosecutors’ offices have been made aware, even the ordinary ones, and there is particular attention paid to those activities that do not fall under criminal prosecution.” For now, apart from a few isolated cases, Fentanyl has not yet really arrived in Italy: «For cases of acute lethal intoxication, therefore in cases of autopsies, for 2023 data only 4 cases have emerged in which Fentanyl is also present, only in one case it was the main cause of death”, confirmed Sabrina Rossi Strano, president of the forensic toxicologists.
Police forces soon equipped with the antidote
Among Italy’s priorities for the protection of the police there is also the objective of equipping police officers on patrol with the antidote naloxone, “in the shortest time possible”. In practice, the police officers who act in these areas “will have at their disposal the antidote substance, a nasal spray, to ensure that when an officer carries out an intervention that brings out Fentanyl they are not affected”. Naloxone, a possible antidote for Fentanyl, «is certainly a life-saving drug, produced in very small quantities by a company located outside the national territory. There is a very strong need for it to be supplied to the police forces, so we imagine a gradual start of orders to arrive within a reasonable time to equip all the law enforcement agencies that carry out checks. This is a strong need shared by the Ministries of the Interior and Health, who are working to ensure that it is satisfied as soon as possible”, explained Mantovano. However, he immediately made a clarification to avoid “misleading messages”: the fact that naloxone exists must not translate into “the experiment can be done because there is an antidote”, thus testing a substance that “has devastating effects”.
Fentanyl and the “zombie drug”
Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid with narcotic analgesic properties, is in fact about 100 times more powerful than morphine, but also about 100 times more toxic. In Italy, Fentanyl is used for permitted purposes and under medical supervision as a general anesthetic in major surgery operations and in palliative therapy for terminal cancer pain. In the drug market, however, it can be used as a cutting agent for heroin or even in place of heroin itself. Fentanyl and its analogues can be produced in so-called kitchen laboratories, illegal kitchen laboratories and this, in addition to making the substance more potent, also makes it possible to spread it at a lower price. Neither heroin laced with Fentanyl nor Fentanyl alone is the “zombie drug.” This is actually defined as a preparation of heroin or fentanyl cut with xylazine, a veterinary anesthetic and muscle relaxant, currently used very little in Italy. Xylazine produces skin ulcers in the upper and lower limbs, especially where heroin street preparations are injected. These deep ulcerations make users zombies: hence the name used to define this drug.