Fentanyl Adds Deadly Kick to Opioid Woes in Britain
4, 2018
KINGSTON UPON HULL, England — There was something different in the batches of heroin
that circulated through this English port city over the summer, but most addicts had no idea what it was until their friends and fellow addicts, 16 in all, had died of overdoses.
While the scale is small compared with deaths in the United States — where more than 100 Americans die each day from opioid abuse — British authorities fear
that fentanyl could become the country’s next most dangerous drug.
The couple say they have been clean from heroin and fentanyl for several months now,
but many of their friends are addicted and have been suffering from severe withdrawal symptoms as supplies of fentanyl have grown scarcer in the recent crackdown.
Britain already has Europe’s highest proportion of heroin addicts,
and last year, drug-related deaths hit a record high in England and Wales, with 3,744 deaths mainly from heroin and other opioids.
After picking up the drug from his dealer, he went to the house of a friend, Billy Kenwood, who was also an addict
but had stopped taking fentanyl after he nearly died from an overdose last year.
The drug has killed thousands of Americans, including the rock stars Prince and Tom Petty,
but the lethal risk it poses has barely deterred addicts in Kingston Upon Hull, known familiarly as Hull.