Elephant tranquilizer disguised as oxycodone found during Ohio drug bust
Thousands of pills more potent than fentanyl and morphine were found in a drug bust last month.
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Jorge Santillan, 41, of Indianapolis, was indicted on March 5 in Fairfield County Common Pleas Court.
He's facing charges of aggravated drug trafficking, aggravated drug possession, and illegal use or possession of drug paraphernalia, Attorney General Dave Yost said in a release.
Pickerington Police found that Santillan had pills marked as oxycodone and multiple bags containing a powdery substance. The pills and powder were sent to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations.
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They identified 3,723 pills meant to resemble pharmaceuticals were actually carfentanil, 'a lethal synthetic opioid about 100 times more potent than fentanyl and 10,000 times more potent than morphine,' according to Yost.
Carfentanil is used by veterinarians to sedate large animals like elephants and rhinoceroses and is not approved for human use.
Thirty-two samples containing carfentanil have already been identified in the first four months of 2025.
Carfentanil peaked in Ohio in 2017, when the BCI lab found it in 1,119 drug samples, according to Yost.
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