Officials sentenced a man to nine years in prison for selling heroin laced with the powerful painkiller fentanyl, causing six overdoses.
Police initially arrested thirty-three-year-old Lamar Sinclair after several undercover sales with officers tested positive for fentanyl. Fentanyl is a painkiller 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine and is the primary driver of the U.S. heroin epidemic and the disturbing increase in overdoses. Sinclair reportedly bragged about how potent his heroin was, and dubbed it “The Missile” for its strength, reports CBS 6.
Sinclair pleaded guilty Sept. 7 to conspiracy to distribute heroin in Norfolk and Virginia Beach along with eight other people. Authorities found that Sinclair had been involved with illegal sales of heroin for a least four years.
Emergency responders dealt with six overdoses tied to Sinclair’s fentanyl spiked batches, and while no one died, all six had to be revived by authorities with the overdose antidote naloxone, also called Narcan. Prosecutors said Sinclair was aware of the overdoses and continued selling his batch.
A record 33,000 people died from opioid overdoses in 2015 and the problem only seems to be accelerating. Health officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed Dec. 8 that for the first time ever, there were more deaths related to heroin than gun homicides or suicides in 2015.
“The epidemic of deaths involving opioids continues to worsen,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said Dec. 8. “Prescription opioid misuse and use of heroin and illicitly manufactured fentanyl are intertwined and deeply troubling problems. We need to drastically improve both the treatment of pain and the treatment of opioid use disorders and increase the use of naloxone to reverse opioid overdose.”
Heroin deaths contributed to the first drop in U.S. life expectancy since 1993. Opioid fatalities also eclipsed deaths from motor vehicle accidents in 2015. The substance currently accounts for roughly 80 percent of drug fatalities. The U.S. suffered the deadliest year on record for fatal drug overdoses, which claimed 52,404 lives in 2015.
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