What's in 619 samples sold as fentanyl in powder form?

How often are drug types found together in confirmed drug checking results?

A given drug sample can have multiple positive results. On way to examine these results is to look at how often things occur together. In the heatmaps below, we present the percentage of samples testing positive for the pair of drugs or drug categories listed (ignoring the presence of all other drugs). The diagonal (where the column name and row name are the same) represents those samples testing positive for only that drug category (these samples may have tested positive for a drug category not listed here). The rows and columns are ordered from largest to smallest share of drug checking samples, alone or in combination. For more details on drug categories named, click here.

For example, if you mouse over the row marked Fentanyl analogues and the column marked Fentanyl, you can see that 50% of these samples to date involved fentanyl and at least one fentanyl analogue, with or without any other drug mentioned here or any drug not included in the matrix. If you mouse over the Fentanyl alone cell (Fentanyl row and Fentanyl column), you can see that 17% tested positive for fentanyl and no other category here. If you move along the Fentanyl row (or column) you can see the share of all samples that tested positive for fentanyl itself and that other drug type. If you move along the Xylazine row or column, you can see that 75 of the 78 cases positive for xylazine also had fentanyl, while 58 cases were positive for fentanyl analogues alongside xylazine. Of the 49 samples not positive for either fentanyl itself or an analogue, 23 samples were positive for other analgesics alone, 6 were positive for methamphetamine alone, 7 for cocaine alone, and 1 for ketamine alone. Eleven samples were positive for no drug in the matrix, i.e. they did not have fentanyls or anything else presented here.

Data notes

Drug testing sites can do little about potential cross-contamination: The container a client used may or may not have been used before. Therefore, any unusual combination may be due to cross-contamination and not represent drugs actually sold together. Results are cumulative and reflect all confirmatory testing results as of 11AM PST 19 November 2024.

What's in things sold as...