carfentanil

Episode 55: Street Sampling Synthetics, from Carfentanil to Xylazine with Alex Krotulski

April 23, 2021 Narcotica Episodes 00:44:56 0 Comments

Amid a wave of synthetic drugs in recent years, Kensington, Pennsylvania has emerged as the locus for a different kind of experimentation, through a new generation of freelance entrepreneurs. Their bathtub chemistry is often guided by trial and error—leaving doctors, public health officials and harm reductionists struggling to understand the latest side effects.

Last year, a concerned toxicologist from the nonprofit Center for Forensic Science Research & Education (CFSRE) at the Fredric Rieders Family Foundation, the academic and research arm of NMS Labs outside Philadelphia, conceived of a new testing program. It employs sophisticated mass spectrometry to reveal the composition of retail-level street drugs.

Alex Krotulski, an associate director of the CFSRE, spoke to Narcotica co-host Chris Moraff about everything from synthetic cannabinoids like 5F-APB to carfentanil to xylazine.

You can follow Alex Krotulski on Twitter: @alexkrotulski and read Chris’s report on this subject in Filter Magazine.

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Producers: Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah, Zachary Siegel
Co-producer: Garrett Farah
Music: Glass Boy / Suhov
Intro voice: Jenny Schaye
Image: edit: Troy Farah

Episode 27: What’s the Most Dangerous Drug?

September 6, 2019 Narcotica Episodes 01:31:32 0 Comments

Narcotica co-host Zachary Siegel was in Los Angeles for a conference on depicting drug use in Hollywood films and TV shows, so co-host Troy Farah trudged down from the High Desert and they recorded an episode in a hotel room. Despite doing Narcotica for well over a year, the pair hadn’t met in person before. (Chris Moraff couldn’t make this episode.) Picking an impromptu topic, they decided to riff on a recent USA Today article titled “The 25 most dangerous drugs.”

So… what is the most dangerous drug? Alcohol? Carfentanil? Acetaminophen? And what is with the obsession with ranking these things? Lots of riffing and banter in this episode, so take some of this info with a grain of salt (it’s not medical advice) and we’ll be back to interviewing policy experts and drug nerds next week.

Plus, we hope to get together in person with Chris in St. Louis this November 6th to 9th, for the Drug Policy Reform conference. More details here: http://www.reformconference.org/

Read the USA Today article here:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/07/31/opioid-epidemic-25-most-dangerous-drugs-side-effects-death-rates/39807161/

Follow Narcotica on Facebook, Twitter and support us on Patreon. Your support is appreciated! We’re on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, Sticher and more. Tell your friends about us!
Producers: Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah, Zachary Siegel
Co-Producer: Aaron Ferguson
Music: Glass Boy, Aaron Ferguson
Image: Pixabay, edit by Troy Farah