Orange County urges state to outlaw opioid spinoff drugs – News – recordonline.com

Orange County lawmakers soon will call on the state to outlaw fentanyl variations known as analogues to help authorities prosecute the sellers of a drug involved in almost 20 percent of the fatal opioid overdoses in Orange County this year.

A resolution unanimously approved by two committees last week and set to go to the full county Legislature on Thursday urges the state to add fentanyl analogues to its list of controlled substances, thereby rendering them illegal.

According to data in the resolution, those spinoff drugs – altered in labs for the very purpose of evading prosecution – played a role in 18 of the 102 opioid-related deaths that took place in Orange County this year as of Nov. 27.

Robert Conflitti, the county’s executive assistant district attorney, said the state took a partial step this year by outlawing two specific analogues as part of the budget, but needs a broader approach to stay ahead of chemists for the illegal drug industry.

With slight changes in fentanyl’s composition, he said, they can produce the same effect while sidestepping the law and sometimes making the drug deadlier.

“The result is, we’re constantly following behind the drug dealers,” he said.

Conflitti wrote the county resolution set for final approval this week, which calls on state lawmakers and Gov. Andrew Cuomo to pass a law to make any “fentanyl-related substance” a controlled substance.

Federal law already uses that catch-all definition, but similar language is needed in state law for county prosecutors to use against sellers of fentanyl analogues.

The state Senate unanimously passed a bill last year that would have added analogues to the controlled substances list, but the Assembly didn’t take up that legislation in 2017 or 2018.

State lawmakers are set to return to Albany in January to begin the 2019 session. 

Opioid-related deaths have increased in Orange County for each of the past four years, according to data from the county Medical Examiner’s Office.

The number of people to die from opioid overdoses climbed from 67 in 2014 to 72 in 2015, 82 in 2016 and 99 in 2017.

cmckenna@th-record.com