The term is becoming more common: fentanyl, the zombie drug. A drug used as a narcotic that wreaks havoc in North America. At the moment, its consumption continues to be controlled in Spain. The Mossos d’Esquadra confirm that they maintain surveillance, although not one overdose has been registered in Catalonia and no items have been seized.
The fact that consumption continues to be controlled today by medical prescription does not mean that the Catalan police, such as the Ertzaintza, the Civil Guard and the National Police, lower their guard. “We know, because it has already happened with other substances, that sooner or later trends in the United States end up reaching Europe. Spain is not the gateway, they are usually the Nordic countries. But they come.”
The person who speaks in this way is the mayor of the Mossos, Joan Carles Granja, second in command of the general police station for criminal investigation of the Catalan police. A person in charge of the Civil Guard specializing in narcotics confirms that in the areas of his competence the seizure is insignificant and that no overdoses have been documented that set off the alarms. But he agrees with the mayor and with a person in charge of the National Police: “You have to be prepared.”
In 2018, a consignment of 291 grams of fentanyl that came from Morocco was seized. Subsequently, other seizures have been made that do not exceed thirty grams. This reveals that drug traffickers are testing the market, knowing that the ability to create dependency on this substance is infinitely greater than that of others. It has also been used to cut or adulterate doses of cocaine or heroin.
But the real zombie drug, the deadliest and most widely consumed, is not fentanyl in Spain, the use of which on the black market causes thousands of overdose deaths and is already a major public health problem in the United States, Canada and Mexico. . The images of drug addicts in those countries wandering around like the living dead, hence the name, makes the question inevitable: can that happen here?
The experts consulted explain that we must remain vigilant with fentanyl, as with all new psychoactive substances. But the fact that this very powerful opioid has become “a plague in the United States” (these are the words of President Joe Biden) does not mean that it will also be so in Spain, where its use under strict medical control is closely monitored and its clandestine consumption is ” residual”.
This is how the survey on alcohol and other drugs in Spain for 2022 qualifies it. This X-ray, carried out by the Ministry of Health on a biennial basis and which has already reached its fourteenth edition, highlights a reality so evident that it is sometimes not seen. “Alcohol continues to be the most consumed psychoactive substance.” More than 76% of people between the ages of 15 and 64 have used it in the last 12 months.
The next drugs with the highest prevalence of use in Spain are tobacco (39%), hypnosedatives with and without a prescription (13%), cannabis (10.6%) and cocaine (2.4%). Heroin seems to have stabilized, if the results of a survey carried out among 26,344 people are extrapolated: last year only 0.6% of the population declared having tried it at some time in their lives and only 0.1% in the last twelve months .
This newspaper witnessed a very justified consumption of fentanyl in April. She took it lollipop-shaped Beth, a paraplegic and cancer patient. To endure the pain, she has a morphine patch, which she renews every three days. And, when she receives the experts from the Institut Guttmann for home neurorehabilitation at home, she resorts to this other powerful analgesic. “It’s the only thing that allows me to continue therapy.”
Safety and health professionals ensure that the inappropriate or unsanitary use of this substance, outside the medical and pharmacological circuit, is irrelevant. Spokesmen for the Ministry of Health maintain that “codeine and tramadol are the opioid analgesics with the highest prevalence of use among the population between 15 and 64 years of age.” Its presence, however, “has diminished in favor of other opioids.”
What other opioids? According to Health, not only fentanyl, but oxycodone, hydromorphone, pethidine, tapentadol, methadone and buprenorphine. In 2018, 3.6% of the population admitted having used fentanyl at some time in their lives. Four years later, that percentage has quadrupled to 14.7%. It is, in any case, consumption prescribed by professionals and with health supervision.
Consumption outside hospital circuits is currently negligible in Spain, despite the alarmism of some. Eight out of ten people who have used opioid analgesics at least once (whether fentanyl or any other) indicate that in general terms they “follow the doctors’ instructions exactly”. In addition, 8% of those surveyed by Health affirm that they consumed them “for less than the prescribed time”.
And what about other new psychoactive substances? Those that imitate the effect of illegal drugs such as cannabis, cocaine or ecstasy. These are synthetic cannabiboides, synthetic marijuana or products known in the world such as keta, spice, meow meow, flakka, superman, cathinones, mephedrone, NBOMe, kratom… 1.9% of the population admits to having tried them. Ketamine, the most consumed, does not even reach 1%.
There are other types of zombies, although they enjoy greater social acceptance. Many don’t even see their habit as a danger. Almost 17% of the population admits that they have gotten drunk in 2022. They were even more, 19.4%, in 2020 (we have already said that Health surveys on drugs are carried out every two years). The earliest onset of any type of drug occurs precisely in drinking (16.5 years).
At the moment, fentanyl does not worry the authorities, who attribute its increase (remarkable in percentage terms, but negligible globally) “to a greater medical prescription.” The debate about the risks of seeing drug addicts like those in the United States on our streets, who look like extras from The Walking Dead series, is not as worrisome as other practices, particularly binge drinking.
It is a custom as old as the forests, although it already has its corresponding and unnecessary Anglicism to pretend that it is something new: binge drinking. This type of abusive consumption, say those responsible for the ministry, “is more frequent today than years ago in Spain”. It is a risky habit that is also concentrated in very young sections of the population, between 20 and 24 years of age. .
