Toxicology tests reveal three women who overdosed in Firestone Park had elephant tranquilizer, party drug in system – News – Akron Beacon Journal

The overdose deaths of three 20-year-old women celebrating one of their birthdays in April stunned Greater Akron.

Tara Williams, Ashtyn Andrade and Courtney Collier were not drug addicts.

The three may have smoked marijuana, family and friends said, but they could not imagine them intentionally dabbling in heroin or any of its lab-made cousins during the opioid scourge that’s left scores of Summit County residents dead.

Yet the Summit County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed Friday that all three died after overdosing on carfentanil — the elephant tranquilizer that surfaced in Akron over the July 4 weekend in 2016, causing at least 236 overdoses in Akron over a three-week period.

Toxicology tests also revealed that the young women had MDMA — a popular party drug more commonly known as “ecstasy” or “molly” — in their systems.

Was the MDMA laced with carfentanil? A tiny amount of carfentanil, no bigger than a grain of sand, can kill an adult. Or did the three knowingly take MDMA and then a second drug they did not know was carfentanil? It wasn’t clear Friday.

In the eight months since the deaths of Williams, Andrade and Collier, Akron narcotics investigators have narrowed their search to a person suspected of supplying the carfentanil and MDMA, police spokesman Lt. Rick Edwards said Friday. But they don’t have the evidence needed to make an arrest, he said.

Opioid danger

Health officials in April said the case illustrated the danger opioids now pose to recreational drug users. Dr. Doug Smith of the Summit County ADM (Alcoholism, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services) Board said after the women died that this is the riskiest time in history to use drugs bought on the street, because you never know what you are truly buying.

Since then, there have been reports of hundreds of people across the country overdosing on opioid-laced cocaine, lab-made synthetic marijuana and methamphetamine that looks like candy.

The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office earlier this month issued a special warning after discovering the powerful synthetic painkiller fentanyl disguised and sold as 30 mg oxycodone pills.

“This is an immediate threat to the public health safety, causing a heightened concern for potentially fatal overdoses,” authorities said.

Oxycodone — the opioid in Oxycontin, Percocet and Percodan — is about 50 percent stronger than morphine, The Washington Post reports. Fentanyl can be about 50 to 100 percent stronger than morphine, the newspaper reports. And carfentanil, the drugs that killed the three young women in Akron, is 10,000 times stronger that morphine.

Both fentanyl and carfentanil are often made in Chinese labs, ordered by drug dealers over the internet, shipping via U.S. mail and sold on the streets.

This week, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed what many already suspected: Fentanyl is now the drug most frequently involved in U.S. overdose deaths.

It marks an evolution in the recent drug crisis that began to blossom in 2011 when the doctors were overprescribing oxycodone. The painkiller was responsible for most U.S. overdose deaths until 2015, when many users turned to cheaper and more easily obtainable heroin.

But a year later, fentanyl and, to a lesser extent, carfentanil hit the United States in what the CDC calls “the third wave” of the opioid epidemic.

Summit County

In Summit County, despite the overdose deaths of the three women in April, overdoses from both drugs have waned in 2018.

People who work with area drug users say that is in part because of expanded public health outreach and recovery resources. But they also credit the wide availability of naloxone — the nose spray that anyone can buy and use to reverse an opioid overdose — and fear. 

Some opioid users told counselors they were switching to methamphetamine and cocaine, hoping those drugs were safer.

In the immediate aftermath of the deaths of Williams, Andrade and Collier, Summit County Public health reported its lowest weekly overdose numbers in two years — nine.

Summit County overdoses have risen since April but remain significantly below 2016 and 2017 levels.

There were 30 in Summit County between Dec. 7 and Thursday, according to the most recent public health report.

Nine of those overdoses happened Thursday.

Amanda Garrett can be reached at 330-996-3725 or agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @agarrettABJ.