Skip to Content
800-533-8762
  • Careers
  • Newsroom
  • Health Care Professionals
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
UPMC
  • Find a Doctor
  • Services
    • Frequently Searched Services
    • Frequently Searched Services
      Allergy & Immunology Behavioral & Mental Health Cancer Ear, Nose & Throat Endocrinology Gastroenterology Heart & Vascular Imaging Neurosciences Orthopaedics
      Physical Rehabilitation Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery Primary Care Senior Services Sports Medicine Telemedicine Transplant Surgery Walk-In Care Weight Management Women’s Health
      See all Services
    • Services by Region
    • Find a UPMC health care facility close to you quickly by browsing by region.
      UPMC in Western Pa. Western Pa. and New York
      UPMC in Central Pa. Central Pa.
      UPMC in North Central Pa. North Central Pa.
      UPMC in Western Md. Maryland & West Virginia
    • See All Services
  • Locations
    • Locations by Type
    • Locations by Type
      UPMC hospitals
      Hospitals
      Physical Therapy
      Physical Therapy
      Urgent care
      Walk-In Care
      UPMC Outpatient Centers
      Outpatient Centers
      UPMC Imaging Services
      Imaging
      Community Health Centers
      Community Health Centers
      See All Locations
    • Locations by Region
    • Locations by Region
      UPMC in Southwest Pa. Southwest Pa.
      UPMC in North Central Pa. North Central Pa.
      UPMC in Northwest Pa and Ny. Northwest Pa. & Western N.Y.
      UPMC in West Central Pa. West Central Pa.
      UPMC in Central Pa. Central Pa.
      UPMC in Western Md. Maryland & West Virginia
    • See All Locations
  • Patients & Visitors
    • Patient & Visitor Resources
    • Patient & Visitor Resources
      Patients and Visitors Resources Pay a Bill Classes & Events Medical Records Health Library Patient Information
      Patient Portals Privacy Information Shared Decision Making Traveling Patients Visitor Information
      Man uses mobile phone
      Pay a Bill
      Nurse reviews medical chart
      Request Medical Records
  • Patient Portals
  • Find Covid-19 updates
  • Schedule an appointment
  • Request medical records
  • Pay a bill
  • Learn about financial assistance
  • Find classes & events
  • Send a patient an eCard
  • Make a donation
  • Volunteer
  • Read HealthBeat blog
  • Explore UPMC Careers
Skip to Content
UPMC
  • Patient Portals
  • For Patients & Visitors
    • Find a Doctor
    • Locations
    • Patient & Visitor Resources
    • Pay a Bill
    • Services
    • More
      • Medical Records
      • Financial Assistance
      • Classes & Events
      • HealthBeat Blog
      • Health Library
  • About UPMC
    • Why UPMC
    • Facts & Stats
    • Supply Chain Management
    • Community Commitment
    • More
      • Financials
      • Support UPMC
      • UPMC Apps
      • UPMC Enterprises
      • UPMC International
  • For Health Care Professionals
    • Physician Information
    • Resources
    • Education & Training
    • Departments
    • Credentialing
  • Careers
  • Contact Us
  • Newsroom
  • UPMC >
  • Media Relations >
  • News Releases >
  • creppage fentanyl
Media Relations
News Releases
Central Pa. News
North Central Pa. News
Contact Us
Experts
Community-Focused News
Media Kits
Media RSS
Media Relations
News Releases
Central Pa. News
North Central Pa. News
Contact Us
Experts
Community-Focused News
Media Kits
Media RSS

Chat Keywords List

  • cancel or exit: Stops your conversation
  • start over: Restarts your current scenario
  • help: Shows what this bot can do
  • terms: Shows terms of use and privacy statement
  • feedback: Give us feedback
Continue
Chat with UPMC
RESTART
MENU
CLOSE

​Analyzing Street Drugs Points to Potential Early Warning System in Opioid Crisis

For Journalists

Allison Hydzik
Director, Science and Research
412-647-9975
hydzikam@upmc.edu

Ashley Trentrock
Director
412-586-9776
trentrockar@upmc.edu

Want to Make an Appointment or Need Patient Information?
Contact UPMC at

1-800-533-8762.

Go to Find a Doctor to search for a UPMC doctor.

Pitt Health Sciences

2/2/2018

PITTSBURGH – In just two years, the powerful opioid fentanyl went from nonexistent to detected in more than 1 in 7 stamp bags analyzed by the Allegheny County Office of the Medical Examiner, according to an analysis led by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. Stamp bags are small wax packets that contain mixtures of illicit drugs, most commonly heroin, packaged for sale and sometimes stamped with a graphical logo by drug dealers to market their contents.

The findings, published in the journal Public Health Reports, suggest that real-time information about stamp bags can be used to supplement current public health surveillance measures and could serve as an early warning of new illegal drugs of high lethality available at the local level. It is the first robust and detailed public health report of a stamp bag surveillance system.

“We believe this way of examining drug evidence could be expanded upon for use in public health surveillance and monitoring in other regions,” said lead author Kathleen Creppage, M.P.H., C.P.H., a doctoral candidate in Pitt Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology. “It could be used to inform educational campaigns, allocate limited resources and devise prevention strategies. First responders also could benefit from knowing what drugs are in circulation so they can take proper precautions to protect themselves and be prepared with overdose reversal medications, such as naloxone.”

In the U.S., fatal heroin overdoses have increased in the past decade by 300 percent, with fentanyl – a substance that is 20 to 50 times more potent than heroin – and its analogs increasingly contributing to overdoses. The drug often is implicated in clusters of overdose deaths when it is mixed with heroin and users do not realize what they are taking is more powerful than usual. 

In Allegheny County, stamp bags seized as evidence by law enforcement authorities are submitted to the county’s Office of the Medical Examiner for testing. The drugs are sorted into batches based on similar characteristics, such as the stamp and color of the drug, and a single bag is randomly selected from each batch for testing.

The research team compiled the medical examiner’s drug chemistry laboratory test results of stamp bag contents from 2010 through 2016. A total of 16,594 stamp bags were tested by the lab during that period.

Before 2014, none of the tested bags contained fentanyl. By 2016 it was found in 15.5 percent of the tested stamp bags, with 4.1 percent containing fentanyl as the only controlled substance present.

Toxicology results from overdose victims take weeks or months, and state and national mortality data lag by about 18 months. Drug evidence testing is usually available much more quickly – in Allegheny County it is available for the current month.

“The face of the current opioid overdose epidemic changes quickly from month to month. The ability to rapidly analyze drugs causing these overdoses, and make that knowledge available to all stakeholders, is critical to efforts to deal with the crisis,” said co-author Karl E. Williams, M.D., M.P.H., Allegheny County Medical Examiner. “This study of stamp bags results from a unique collaboration based on technical capabilities of my office and the analytic resources of the Pitt Graduate School of Public Health.”

Stamp bag testing and monitoring should not replace other drug surveillance systems, such as overdose mortality data and toxicology reports, said Creppage, also an intern at the Allegheny County Office of the Medical Examiner.

“But it can be a powerful complement to these surveillance systems,” she said. “The data are available, and we need to identify and explore these different data sources as part of our efforts in understanding and combatting the opioid epidemic.”

Senior author Anthony Fabio, Ph.D., M.P.H., associate professor of epidemiology at Pitt Public Health, added that the work “is an important step in developing multi-disciplinary tools to quickly identify current and future sources of new drugs that enter the illegal market.”

Additional authors on this study are Jeanine Buchanich, Ph.D., M.Ed., Thomas Songer, Ph.D., and Stephen Wisniewski, Ph.D., all of Pitt Public Health; as well as Joshua Yohannan, drug chemistry laboratory manager at the Allegheny County Office of the Medical Examiner.

UPMC
200 Lothrop Street Pittsburgh, PA 15213

412-647-8762 800-533-8762

Patients And Visitors
  • Find a Doctor
  • Locations
  • Pay a Bill
  • Patient & Visitor Resources
  • Disabilities Resource Center
  • Services
  • Medical Records
  • No Surprises Act
  • Price Transparency
  • Financial Assistance
  • Classes & Events
  • Health Library
Health Care Professionals
  • Physician Information
  • Resources
  • Education & Training
  • Departments
  • Credentialing
Newsroom
  • Newsroom Home
  • Inside Life Changing Medicine Blog
  • News Releases
About
  • Why UPMC
  • Facts & Stats
  • Supply Chain Management
  • Community Commitment
  • Financials
  • Supporting UPMC
  • HealthBeat Blog
  • UPMC Apps
  • UPMC Enterprises
  • UPMC Health Plan
  • UPMC International
  • Nondiscrimination Policy
Life changing is...
Follow UPMC
  • Contact Us
  • Website/Email Terms of Use
  • Medical Advice Disclaimer
  • Privacy Information
  • Active Privacy Alerts
  • Sitemap
© 2025 UPMC I Affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences Supplemental content provided by Healthwise, Incorporated. To learn more, visit healthwise.org
Find Care
Providers
Video Visit
Portal Login