What is attractive about drugs sold in gas stations? Elizabeth Tracey reports
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Perhaps it started with caffeine supplements, where drivers who needed a boost could quaff the drug so they could continue their road trip. Now the range of substances purveyed in gas stations may produce opioid-like impact, says Michael Fingerhood, a substance use disorder expert at Johns Hopkins.
Fingerhood: Some are just going to go use fentanyl, it's cheap you know, dollar, three dollars, $6. I think it's going to be cheaper than any of these other things that you would buy at a gas station mart, which should have no business selling any of this stuff. Who uses these things? It's usually someone who's having trouble coping, under stress, is looking for a way to escape, unfortunately the same way with alcohol and they're afraid of fentanyl and the drug dealers and they say oh this is being sold at a shop it must be safer. :29
Fingerhood says these drugs are brightly packaged and enticingly named, and are directed largely at a teenage and young adult market. The bad news is they can be just as dangerous as the more obvious drugs, and they’re hard to identify when someone does present at an ED. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.