The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency issued its final rule yesterday that placed furanyl fentanyl onto the Schedule I list of controlled substances, effectively criminalizing the manufacture, sale and use of the substance. This final action follows from a September 27 notice of intent that could have led to a final action within 30 days.
What is furanyl fentanyl? Well, it's never been sold as a prescription pharmaceutical. Unless you've been buying opioids through non-medical channels, you are unlikely to have encountered it. Furanyl fentanyl is a chemical relative of the medically useful drug, fentanyl, and is the latest of fentanyl analogues that clandestine chemists have been making to circumvent international controlled substances laws.
Fentanyl, first made by the legendary chemist Paul A. Janssen in 1960, was originally intended as an intravenous anesthetic together with other drugs. If you've had a wisdom tooth extraction or colonoscopy, chances are that you have been the beneficiary of fentanyl.
Unfortunately, fentanyl analogues have been re-emerging in the recreational drug trade since an insurgence in the mid-1980s. While fentanyl has a peak effect similar to other opioids, it can be achieved with doses 50 to 100 times less than morphine. Therefore, fentanyl and its chemical relatives have been more easily transported, and trafficking in those without controlled substances-designation has been largely legal.
An unrelated synthetic opioid first made at Upjohn in the 1970s called U-47,700 was placed on Schedule I earlier this month. U-47,700 was found together with fentanyl in the blood of the musician, Prince Rogers Nelson, when he was found dead at his Minnesota home and studio. Buried within a 1978 patent, U-47,700 exemplifies the extent to which recreational drug users will scour the peer-reviewed and patent literature for research chemicals with opioid effects but which were not, at the time, illegal.
The fentanyl class of opioids are generally more potent than any other group of naturally occurring or synthetic opioids. What this means to non-pharmaceutical users is that very small differences in measurements can lead to catastrophic health effects. Street drugs don't come with a certificate of analysis as to their content, so small doping of heroin or cocaine with fentanyl or a chemical relative can be potentially lethal to the user.
