WHAT IS FENTANYL?

Fentanyl is an extremely powerful drug that has been used for decades as a painkiller.¹ Because of its high potential to cause addiction, it has primarily been used to relieve severe pain, such as from advanced cancer or after serious surgery.

Fentanyl is in the same class of drugs as painkillers like morphine or oxycodone and the illegal drug heroin.² Those drugs, called opioids, are primarily products of the opium poppy. Some, like heroin and morphine, are directly derived from opium. Others, like oxycodone, are semisynthetic, meaning created in a laboratory from a natural substance. Fentanyl is 100 percent created in a lab and fully synthetic.

No plant products are needed to make fentanyl, which means it can be created anywhere that lab chemicals can be obtained. This has made it easy for drug-trafficking organizations to manufacture it in illicit labs for distribution as a street drug. In 2013, distribution of fentanyl began skyrocketing in the United States, with resultant overdose deaths increasing from that point forward.³