Since 2021, the lab has tested about 5,600 samples, identifying more than 270 different substances.
Scientists inside a room at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Caudill Labs are doing work that’s not happening anywhere else in the country. They’re receiving thousands of street drug samples, running them through a machine to get a real-time look at what’s in them.
“Normally, we don’t find out what is in street drugs until it is too late — when people are either dead or arrested,” said Dr. Nabarun Dasgupta, the senior scientist at UNC’s Street Drug Analysis Lab. “There’s no opportunity for prevention; no opportunity for recovery.”
The scientists don’t need much to test — just a sample less than a grain of rice. About 200 public health organizations, including 34 in North Carolina, send in kits with samples.
Xylazine, Benzatropine, a hallucinogen and another kind of designer chemical among drugs detected in sample linked to dozens of eastern North Carolina overdoses.
It’s been six weeks since four people died in Goldsboro in four days and more than a dozen others across eastern North Carolina overdosed in a matter of weeks.
This week, scientists at the UNC Street Drug Analysis Lab were able to provide those. The test results from a sample collected in a baggie show that what was sold as illegal fentanyl was actually a mixture of eight different drugs.
“It turns out it was a particularly nasty mix of substances that involved fentanyl and xylazine, Benzatropine, a hallucinogen and another kind of designer chemical,” said Dr. Nabarun Dasgupta, a senior scientist in the lab. “It was really unexpected so it’s not surprising that a mix like that leads to a lot of overdoses.”
The lab has partnerships with dozens of health organizations, including Edgecombe County EMS. In the weeks since the uptick in overdoses in the county, Dalton Barrett and Dasgupta have formed a friendship as they both work with the common goal to address the crisis in a data-driven, science-led manner.
“This was pretty eye opening for us,” Barrett said. “When I saw the results, there was a number of things that I’d never seen before in Edgecombe County, per se, and it didn’t really make sense as far as the mixture.”
This is their second attempt at trying to identify what was in the supply that resulted in 16 nonfatal overdoses in Edgecombe during a two-week span last month. The first sample came from a dollar bill but there wasn’t enough residue for an analysis.
“I was extremely disappointed about the dollar bill sample,” Dalton said. ” I felt like maybe I had done something wrong or we just didn’t get lucky and sometimes that’s just how it goes. But being able to put our finger on this is gonna be a big, big deal for us.”
This time, the sample came from a stamp bag. The street product is known as Pringles.
What’s particularly unsettling: a few months earlier Barrett had samples tested from a different bag that had the same stamp and the results came back vastly different.
“Usually, we try and think about these stamps as like, labels on a beer bottle like this is Michelob Ultra, this is this and it’s like the same thing, time and time again,” Barrett explained. “But that’s not the case.”
Barrett says people in the community likely didn’t know that it was a mixture of so many substances since it had that same stamp and they had been safe using it in the past.
“Even the person selling it probably had no idea that it contained these substances,” Dasgupta said.
With the variety of drugs in the supply, WRAL News asked whether would naloxone work to reverse an overdose. Both men said yes, but the people probably would’ve remained unconscious because of how potent the substance was. It is unclear if xyzlazine testing strips would have worked in this case.
Barrett says they’re unsure if this contaminated supply remains in the area. They’ve seen a 33% drop in overdoses this month compared to last. Still, he says it’s “a big, big deal” they were able to put their finger on what exactly is in supply and he is hopeful the results will raise awareness and save lives.
“Seeing people of my age dying from something that we can prevent really kind of tickles my heartstrings as a medical professional,” Barrett said.
The family of a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill freshman student who died after overdosing on fentanyl-laced cocaine on the campus of Duke University is seeking some justice for their daughter.
So far, no one has been charged in the death of Elizabeth Grace Burton, or Gracie as her family called her. She was 19 years old.
Court documents reveal Burton became “unsteady” and “wobbly on her feet” about an hour after meeting with a suspected drug dealer on March 9 outside a Duke student’s dorm. The former Duke student is Patrick Rowland, who pleaded guilty to a drug distribution charge.
An autopsy revealed Burton died two days after investigators said she met up with Rowland after a party and contacted him to buy cocaine.
At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, three students stand behind a card table covered in naloxone injection kits. When a curious student leans in and asks what the kits are for, Caroline Clodfelter, one of the co-founders of the student group running the table, explains: “It will reverse an opioid overdose. … So let’s say you’re going out to a frat — stick it in your pocket. It’s easy to just have on you.”
Nearly 600 miles away, at the State University of New York’s Delhi campus, Rebecca Harrington, who works in student affairs, has also been tabling to prevent fentanyl overdoses. Her table, though, is full of colorful cups, a water jug and candies in zip-close bags — tools for her demonstration on how to use a fentanyl test strip. These test strips allow students to see whether a pill has been laced with the deadly synthetic opioid.
Test strips and naloxone are becoming more and more common on college campuses, and at least one health department has recommended they be added to school packing lists. For students who didn’t bring their own, many campuses are handing them out at welcome fairs, orientation events or campus health centers.
As more teens overdose on fentanyl, schools face a drug crisis unlike any other Fentanyl was involved in the vast majority of teen overdose deaths in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly a quarter of those deaths involved counterfeit pills that weren’t prescribed by a doctor. And the problem has been following teens onto college campuses.
Students may think they’re taking pills like oxycodone, Xanax or Vicodin. Instead, those pills often have fentanyl in them, resulting in overdoses on campuses across the U.S., from Ohio to Colorado to Oregon. At UNC-Chapel Hill, three students died from fentanyl poisoning in just the last two years.
