For when plain heroin isn't enough, heroin with elephant tranqulizer

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In chemical terms, it’s called carfentanil. Colloquially, it’s an elephant tranquilizer.

It’s the most potent opioid used commercially, strong enough to knock out — or even kill — a 15,000-pound pachyderm, and used primarily to sedate other large animals, like ox, moose and buffalo.



Now drug dealers, in an attempt to stretch their supply and deliver a stronger, longer high, are cutting their heroin with carfentanil — which is far more dangerous than its already troublesome but less potent cousin, fentanyl.

And in a 48-hour window this week, two counties near the Ohio-Indiana border may have been hit with a dangerous wave of it.

On Tuesday night, officers responded to at least 11 overdose cases in Jennings County, Ind. That same day and into Wednesday evening, authorities in Hamilton County, Ohio — home to Cincinnati — received more than 50 heroin overdose calls, reported TV station WCPO.

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