Heroin vs. fentanyl

NEW BLOOMFIELD — “Fentanyl, heroin, those are the big ones we see."

Callaway County EMS Staff Paramedic Margie Kriegesmann said they see a mixed bag of drug-related overdose calls.

“We have a base at the north end of the county and we have a base at the south end of the county and one end of the county it’s fentanyl and at the other end of the county, it's heroin. In the north end, we see the meth laced with a lot of fentanyl, and a lot of the heroin is coming out of [Jefferson] City," Kriegesmann said.

Before fentanyl hit the United States, heroin claimed the lives of thousands, but it's not easy to find in some places anymore.

“You really can’t even find heroin anymore you know heroin is the safe option, and so when that’s the conversation that you’re having that 'oh if only we could find some straight heroin' that we could reduce a lot of deaths," said Associate Research Professor Rachel Winograd from the Missouri Institute of Mental Health.

Dr. Sharif Mohr and epidemiologist with Drug Free America Foundation echoed Winograd's sentiments.

“I think in a lot of areas of the country fentanyl has completely displaced heroin, so you can’t even find it anymore," Mohr said.

Dr. Mohr said one of the reasons fentanyl has displaced heroin is because it's dependent on climate and season whereas fentanyl isn't.

Heroin is very time, labor, land, resource-intensive. Just to produce one kilogram of heroin requires [the] cultivation of a whole acre of poppies.

Then when you get one kilo of heroin, I would say approximately 30 to 50 thousand doses and that will retail for 40,000 dollars a roughly.

He noted fentanyl is easier to make and is more profitable because all anyone needs is a basic knowledge of chemistry and a rudimentary lab.

“You can crank out multiple kilos within just a couple of hours, and a kilo of fentanyl retails for approximately three to four thousand dollars and contains millions of doses in that kilo," he said.

Mohr said illicitly made fentanyl made a big impact on the U.S. drug supply around 2015.

It’s so dangerous. Fentanyl compared to heroin, it’s 50 times more powerful than heroin.

Experts say fentanyl is more potent than heroin which makes it deadlier.

“The biggest issue is our poisoned, unregulated, unpredictable, and highly potent drug supply and that’s absolutely leading to more deaths," Winograd said.