Fake Xanax pills caused the death of one woman and made several others awfully sick, says Health officials in San Francisco.
According to CBS San Francisco, the paramedics rushed two men and a woman to a hospital last week after they took pills which they believed to be Xanax pills. Officials said that the fourth person found by the paramedics was already lifeless in the same house. The medical inspector recognized the woman who died as Andrea Choye, 34-years of age.
Doctors added that the Xanax pills turned out to be fake and had an excessively powerful content of narcotic painkiller known as fentanyl, which can cause overdose and death.
In an interview, Dr. Phillip Coffin of the city's health department said that it is specifically alarming him because it is associated to a pill, Xanax, which is widely acquired by people who are looking to, say, cool down after a night of partying.
Coffin said that looking approximately the same to the real Xanax pill, it's remarkably challenging to recognize an authentic to an imitation medicine. To the untrained eye, it could be mistaken for the real pill.
An official statement was released by the authorities about recreational drug users who often buy Xanax off the street or on Craigslist.
Health authorities are now inspecting whether the same kind of pills was also given to several high school students to the hospital nearby the Contra Costa County. Paramedics had driven several Pinole Valley High School students to the ER last Thursday. According to the students who were asked, they said that they took Xanax, but the doctors don't know yet if those were real or fake pills.
Dr. Coffin even expressed his sentiment that it would not surprise him anymore if those were fake pills as it is more rampant.
