Letter: Fentanyl-Fold a Flop

As a professor of pharmacology, I note that the recent article about the "fentanyl fold" was replete with errors. For example, the phenomenon is not caused by fentanyl alone, but rather by the combination of fentanyl with xylazine, which is a veterinary tranquilizer (hence the street name "tranq dope", among others). And statements such as fentanyl "can be a short-action drug and a long-acting drug" is misleading without explanation (it is not the drug, but the physiology/genetics of the person taking it). It is regrettable that this inaccurate article was reprinted from The Arizona Republic without first fact-checking it by the talented reporting staff and editors of the Star, and without first checking with the specialized opioid pharmacology and drug use experts located in Tucson. Addressing the opioid crisis is difficult enough without the uncritical propagation of misinformation from unreliable sources.