![Heroin overdose. [Shutterstock - SanchaiRat - 479165098]](https://images.dailycaller.com/image/width=960,height=411,fit=cover,f=auto/https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/shutterstock_479165098-e1473445373969.jpg "Heroin overdose. [Shutterstock - SanchaiRat - 479165098]")
A drug dealer busted for selling heroin cut with a powerful elephant tranquilizer that was linked to a rash of overdoses in West Virginia is staring at nearly two decades in prison.
Police busted Bruce “Benz” Griggs, a drug dealer from Ohio, in August for pushing a batch of heroin in Huntington, W.V., that sparked 28 overdoses in only six hours. First responders were forced to administer Narcan to a number of the overdose victims, successfully reviving all of them. After conducting tests on the victims, police confirmed the presence of both fentanyl and carfentanil, the powerful elephant tranquilizer, reports NBC News.
Carfentanil, an opiate-based sedative used to tranquilize large animals, is roughly 10,000 times stronger than morphine. Fentanyl is an opioid painkiller roughly 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine.
“He never had any intention of putting anyone in the hospital,” Carl Hostler, Griggs’s lawyer, said in a sentencing memo, according to NBC News. “Multiple hospitalizations make this a serious offense. It can be partially explained by lack of knowledge and the fact that Mr. Griggs was just a pawn in a bigger scheme.”
U.S. District Judge Robert Chambers sentenced Griggs to 18 years and four months in prison Monday for distribution of heroin. Chambers credited the efforts of first responders for avoiding any deaths.
The heroin death rate in West Virginia spiked 20.4 percent between 2014 and 2015, claiming 194 lives in 2015. Synthetic opioids, which includes fentanyl and carfentanil, are also wreaking havoc in the state claiming 217 lives in 2015. The death rate from synthetic opioids jumped 76.4 percent between 2014 and 2015.
Fatal overdoses from heroin quadrupled over the last five years nationally, according to data released by the National Center for Health Statistics Feb. 24. They say the massive increase in heroin and general opioid abuse in the U.S. since 2010 is driven by lower drug prices and ingredients with higher potency, like fentanyl.
Authors of the study noted in 2010 only 8 percent of all fatal drug overdoses stemmed from heroin. In 2015, roughly 25 percent of fatal drug overdoses were caused by heroin.
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