Ohio Invests in Opioid Detection Tech for Investigators

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 67,367 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2018, the most recent year for which complete data is available, and two-thirds of those cases involved opioids. The intervening years have seen the rise of new synthetic opioids, such as carfentanil, that are 10,000 times more potent than morphine and 100 times moreso than fentanyl, according to the CDC. Some of these substances are dangerous just to handle, and if you’re a narcotics officer working in a corridor from the Midwest to the mid-Atlantic — from Ohio to West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and Washington, D.C. — you’re relatively likely to come across them on the job.