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Animal tranquilizer mixed with heroin a new, deadly trend

It's one of the strongest opioids on earth, and experts said ingesting it is a near death wish.

An animal tranquilizer, called carfentanil, is typically used to sedate elephants and other large animals. Now, health officials in northeast Ohio and Philadelphia have reason to believe it's being laced into heroin to intensify the high.

"It's beyond scary. Carfentanil is such a scary drug,” said Dr. Ginger Sturgeon, director of animal health at the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium, where experts occasionally administer the drug to sedate large animals.

“We can give it to those animals in a very small volume, and it prevents trauma to their muscles and a full anesthesia, but in a human, it's just super dangerous,” Sturgeon said. “While it's beneficial of those types of animals, it does make it an extremely dangerous drug, and we need to take quite a few precautions."

Carfentanil is 10,000 times more potent than morphine and a thousand times stronger than fentanyl. Sturgeon, who has a special type of Drug Enforcement Administration license that allows her to handle it, said people should never ingest it or even let it come in contact with the skin. She said the drug is extremely dangerous and has the ability to shut down breathing in humans.

“I require that my staff has on gloves, long sleeves and a full face shield to prevent any contact with the drug,” Sturgeon said. “We keep a close eye on our medications here at the zoo and across America because of the potential danger if they ever get into the wrong hands."

Officials aren't sure if this drug is being shipped from overseas or if it's being manufactured in the states, and said it's only a matter of time before the drug starts showing up in western Pennsylvania.