Carfentanil, a painkiller for elephants and other large mammals, is not intended for humans.
Like fentanyl, it is being mixed into heroin, creating an extremely lethal street drug.
Law enforcement officers have been warned that even touching a small amount of carfentanil powder with bare skin can cause severe effects.
There is no known safe dosage of carfentanil for humans since it is not designed for people and has not been tested for use as a treatment.
Like with other opioids, overdose symptoms are slowed or stopped breathing, itching, nausea, drowsiness, constricted pupils, disorientation and clammy skin.
Naloxone is an antidote for opioid overdoses. Several doses of naloxone are often needed in cases of carfentanil overdose.
Drug dealers mix carfentanil into such drugs as cocaine and heroin because it is cheaper than the other drugs. Users do not know they are getting carfentanil, and officials have difficulty tracking the exact number of deaths because labs are not used to identifying it.
Two milligrams of carfentanil — equal to about 34 grains of salt — is enough to sedate an elephant.
Carfentanil aerosolized into a gas is suspected of being the weapon that Russians used to subdue Chechen terrorists who seized a Moscow theater and threatened to blow it up in 2002.
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