Deadly 'Pink Heroin' Identified In St. Louis County Overdose

ST. LOUIS COUNTY, MO — Police say a deadly new form of heroin blamed for dozens of overdoses around the country has made its way to St. Louis. KMOV reports so-called "pink" heroin — also called "pink elephant — killed a person in St. Louis County last week.

The drug takes it pink color, and its name, from the fact that it is laced with the opioid fentanyl, making it about eight times more potent than regular heroin.

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More than 72,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2017, according to a preliminary estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released last month.

A significant number of the overdose deaths were reported to be caused by fentanyl, with the CDC estimates attributing nearly 30,000 deaths in 2017 to the synthetic opioid. That represents a sharp increase over 2016, when just over 20,000 overdose deaths were reported to be caused by fentanyl.

In Missouri, fentanyl overdoses have grown by more than 25 percent since 2015.

Read more from KMOV.

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