9/11/2023 0 Comments Fake norco![]() Less well-recognized is the ability of drug counterfeiters to introduce their products into this street market. Typically, these drugs are stolen or diverted from legitimate distribution channels, or sold by patients who received legitimate prescriptions. It has long been known that drug abusers, purchasing prescription drugs on the street, will seek out branded products on the assumption that their effects are well understood. Norco is a brandname of Watson Pharma (now Actavis) according to the article, the fake drugs “bore the usual Watson imprint but were beige instead of white.” (The article makes reference to other instances of opioid overdosing that implicate Mallinkrodt’s hydrocodone/acetaminophen product, with pills embossed with “M367.”) China is believed to be the source of most of the fentanyl-laced knockoffs. The emergency personnel identified the fake drug based on the discontinuity between what the patient said she had ingested and what a serum analysis revealed-the presence of fentanyl. The patient became nonresponsive and was revived by emergency medicine personnel with naloxone, the go-to antidote for opioid overdose. But on a certain day, the tablets she purchased were in fact fake drug that contained fentanyl-a synthetic opioid analogue that is 100 times more powerful than morphine. A just published article in the Annals of Emergency Medicine details the case of a northern California patient who apparently routinely purchases Norco (hydrocodone/acetaminophen) tablets on the street, in order to treat (so the patient said) chronic back pain. There appears to be a new type of counterfeit drug distribution in the US-but one that has a quite distinct distribution “channel,” so to speak. ![]()
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