MANSFIELD – The landscape of substance abuse in Mansfield is quickly becoming an “entertaining nightmare,” according to Tony Tambasco.
As director of the Mansfield Police Forensic Science Laboratory, Tambasco would know. He spends his days analyzing drug samples picked up by the Mansfield Police Department, trying to identify trends and tracking the evolution of opioids.
“I’ve spent more time in the last five years in organic chemistry books than I ever have in my career,” Tambasco said. “Routine analysis has now gone out the window.”
Tambasco shared the ins and outs of his days in the laboratory with the Regional Manufacturing Coalition on Wednesday. His presentation included a a historical aspect of drugs of abuse, issues in analysis and identification of emerging drugs, and the continuing evolution of new drugs of abuse.
“When I was first starting back in the 1980s, we were scared to death these designer drug labs out in California would come to Ohio,” Tambasco said. “And now we’re starting to see them.”
The most confounding part of Tambasco’s job these days is analyzing the potent combination of drugs that come across his table. Drug manufacturers and addicts are chasing the next high, and trying to stay one step ahead of the law.
Cocaine and crack cocaine, for example, are still around, but the drug itself hasn’t changed much over the past two decades. The scary part, Tambasco said, is when it comes to heroin.
“When you look at the last couple years there’s a false sense of security because it looks like (heroin) is trending down,” he said. “But unfortunately, that’s not the truth. We have a whole new nightmare coming up.”
Tambasco explained that in 2015, the department saw 144 overdoses and 12 deaths. In 2016, that number jumped almost 200 percent to 429 overdoses and 31 deaths; in 2017 to date, there were 414 overdoses and 21 deaths.
But it’s not the heroin that’s causing these deaths. It’s a significant increase in fentanyl.
“When fentanyl shows up, people start to die,” Tambasco said.
“If people were dropping dead just from heroin, they’d have been dropping dead six or seven years ago, routinely,” he continued. “It’s these other drugs, and most of them don’t know it’s in there.”
Tambasco explained the only time a layperson encounters fentanyl is typically through terminal cancer patients, who use fentanyl patches as pain relievers when the drug slowly seeps into the skin.
“The issue with fentanyl is toxicity,” he said. “We’re seeing fentanyl that doesn’t make sense because it’s not in a patch, it’s showing up in a heroin sample.”
In fact, the toxicity of fentanyl is so dangerous, Tambasco now keeps a dose of Narcan – a drug that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose – hanging on the wall in his laboratory.
Adding to the danger is the fact that sample sizes must now be larger in order to accurately track the variety of chemical combinations in these new drugs. Tambasco is routinely taking five to 10 times more of a normal sample to see all the variables, costing both time and money.
“When I work in the lab now, I’m wearing the mask, the gloves, the hood,” he said. “I juggled cocaine, I wasn’t worried about getting sick or exposed.”
After 36 years in the business, Tambasco said he’s still having fun – but going through training when it comes to fentanyl almost makes him want to throw in the towel.
“These people are chasing the next high,” he said. “It’s out there, and they’re going to put themselves on the edge as far as they can, which boggles my mind because the other side of the edge is dying.”
