People have been getting loaded ever since Julius Wine ate all those bad grapes, and we're mostly OK with it. Sure, we have that War on Drugs business, but as long as dealers aren't shooting each other within our immediate vicinity, we tend to put our heads in the sand about the whole matter. But prescription opioid painkillers, our latest drug epidemic, are a different beast entirely, affecting everyone from inner-city dwellers to Middle-American grandmas. Ignoring this problem has only allowed it to grow more powerfully weird. For example ...

5 Fentanyl Can Kill You Even If You DON'T Take It

Taking opiates like heroin or morphine has been at best an intensely frowned-upon hobby, and at worst a life-ruining addiction that might lead to membership in the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And it's only getting worse. Overdose has become the leading cause of death for Americans under 50, thanks to a relatively new drug called fentanyl. The potent painkiller didn't really hit the streets until 2012, but by 2016, it racked up a staggering 20,000 related deaths in that year alone (more than double the year before it). Not that any one person's life is inherently more valuable than any other's, but one of those deaths was Prince. If fentanyl were a person, we'd have it drawn and quartered.

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The problem with fentanyl is that it's 50-100 times more powerful than morphine, and up to ten times more powerful than heroin. The difference between fun and fatal doses is damn near microscopic.

New Hampshire State Police Forensic Lab

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The thing that really makes fentanyl dangerous is that you don't even have to take it to overdose on it. It's so potent that merely touching it or breathing near it can send you to the hospital. A police officer in New Jersey had to be rushed to the emergency room because a little puff of air came out of the bag of fentanyl he was closing. Police have begun stocking protective gear like Tyvek suits and respirators, and crime labs are researching ways to never have to open a bag of the stuff. Hell, even the nurses tending to an overdose patient can become afflicted, as was the case in Ohio in which three nurses came down with symptoms of fentanyl poisoning from secondhand exposure.

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It's like heroin met anthrax in a dark alley, and they found, to everyone's great dismay, that they actually got along great.