Fentanyl Adds Deadly Kick to Opioid Woes in Britain - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/04/world/europe/uk-fentanyl-opioid-addiction.html
Britain already has Europe’s highest proportion of heroin addicts, and last year, drug-related deaths hit a record high in England and Wales, with 3,744 deaths mainly from heroin and other opioids. While the scale is small compared with deaths in the United States — where more than 100 Americans die each day from opioid abuse — British authorities fear that fentanyl could become the country’s next most dangerous drug.
“People here are prescribed opioids for pain, but nothing to the extent of the U.S., where extremely potent opioids are being prescribed on a large scale,” said Dr. Prun Bijral, the medical director for Change, Grow, Live, a nonprofit organization that focuses on substance abuse. “On the one hand, this is positive. But on the other hand, the U.K. has one of the highest rates of drug-related deaths in Europe.”