(EL PASO COUNTY, Colo.) — The El Paso County Coroner’s Office is warning the community after detecting carfentanil, a synthetic opioid, in a recent case. El Paso County said this is the first known instance of carfentanil being identified locally without the presence of fentanyl.
El Paso County said carfentanil is about 100 times stronger than fentanyl and 10,000 times stronger than morphine. Allegedly, the drug recently reemerged on the illicit market, and because of its structural differences from fentanyl, it does not react with most immunoassays or fentanyl test strips. This can produce a “false negative” result if fentanyl is not present.
According to the public safety alert, a person who died in Colorado Springs in August 2025 was found to be in possession of blue pills made to look like 30mg oxycodone tablets. However, in an analysis of the pills by the El Paso County Coroner’s Office, the pills contained acetaminophen, a common drug used as a cutting agent in illicitly manufactured drugs; metamizole, a pain reliever that was withdrawn from US markets by the FDA in the 1970s but is still sold in other countries; and carfentanil, but no fentanyl…