This College Issued a Warning About Fake Adderall Pills Possibly Containing Fentanyl After Two Deaths

Two Ohio State University (OSU) students passed away on Thursday and Friday, and the school issued an urgent safety message to the community warning about fake Adderall pills. OSU didn’t release the official cause of death in either case, but the statement announcing the first fatality urged students to “be aware of the possibility of contaminated drugs in our community.” It also said a third student had been hospitalized and then released.

“This morning Columbus Public Health shared an alert about fake Adderall pills, which appear to contain fentanyl, causing an increase in overdoses and hospitalizations,” the safety message said. Adderall is a brand-name mixture of two types of drugs: amphetamines and dextroamphetamines, per the U.S. National Library of Medicine. It’s often prescribed to people diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but taking Adderall without a prescription has become a problem on college campuses throughout the U.S., according to a 2018 article in the Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education. “The presence of prescription stimulants on college campuses has risen significantly in recent years,” the authors of the article wrote. They explained that many students take Adderall with the hopes it will help them study for longer periods of time, but warned that taking the drug without a prescription can be dangerous.

Like any counterfeit drugs, Adderall accessed without a prescription can be laced with other substances, such as fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that’s up to 100 times stronger than morphine, per the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Heroin is also often laced with fentanyl to increase its potency, leading to unintentional overdose deaths, according to the DEA, which estimates that 4 of every 10 pills laced with fentanyl contain a potentially lethal dose. This can be as little as 2 milligrams, depending on a person’s size, according to the DEA. “Counterfeit pills may contain lethal amounts of fentanyl or methamphetamine and are extremely dangerous because they often appear identical to legitimate prescription pills, and the user is likely unaware of how lethal they can be,” according to the DEA. OSU’s safety message reiterated that using a contaminated drug just one time can result in death.

Synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, now cause more overdose deaths in the U.S. than any other substance, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). In 2020, 91,799 overdose deaths were reported, and certain synthetic opioids—primarily fentanyl—caused 56,516 of those fatalities, per NIDA.

A fentanyl overdose can cause a person’s breathing to slow or stop, decreasing the amount of oxygen that gets to the brain, according to NIDA. This causes a condition called hypoxia, which can lead to a coma, permanent brain damage, or death.

OSU’s safety message reminded students they can confidentially pick up fentanyl test strips, which can determine whether a substance has been laced with the synthetic opioid, at Student Health Services. It also reminded students they can confidentially access Naloxone, a nasal spray or injectable medication that, if used quickly, can reverse an opioid overdose.

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