Powerful Elephant Tranquilizer And Heroin Additive Hits Nashville For First Time

NASHVILLE, TN — For the first time ever, Metro Police detectives intercepted a package of carfentanil, a powerful opioid increasingly used to cut heroin. Carfentanil, which is 10,000 times more powerful than morphine, is used legally as an elephant tranquilizer, but has increasingly been used as a recreational narcotic or as a heroin additive.

The package intercepted in Nashville contained a 140-mg package of carfentanil, which police say is enough for hundreds of lethal doses.

(For more updates on this story and free news alerts for your neighborhood, sign up for your local Middle Tennessee Patch morning newsletter.)

The sender and recipient information on the package is false, according to police, making it difficult to trace, though they know it was sent from Florida.

Carfentanil emerged out of the former Baltic republics in the early 2000s and then spread to Eastern Europe, supplied typically out of China, where it is manufactured legally. Starting late last year, more and more American police forces reported detections of it as a heroin additive.

Image via Metro Police