Two 13-year-old boys in the ski town of Park City, Utah died within 48 hours of each other in September, likely overdosing on a powerful heroin substitute that had been delivered — legally — to their homes by the U.S. mail, and is now turning up in cities across the nation.
Ryan Ainsworth was found dead on his couch two days after his best friend Grant Seaver passed away. "I wish I had been better warned," sang one of their friends at a massive memorial service. "But now it's too late."
The death toll could have been worse, say investigators, since as many as 100 Park City students had apparently been discussing the drug "Pink" on SnapChat and other social media.
"This stuff is so powerful that if you touch it, you could go into cardiac arrest," Park City Police Chief Wade Carpenter told NBC News. "The problem is if you have a credit card and a cell phone, you have access to it."
Pink, better known by chemists as U-47700, is eight times stronger than heroin, and is part of a family of deadly synthetic opioids, all of them more powerful than heroin, that includes ifentanyl, carfentanil and furanyl fentanyl. By themselves or mixed with other drugs, in forms ranging from pills to powder to mists, they're killing thousands of people across the country, say law enforcement and health officials. The powerful, ersatz opioids are part of a surge of synthetic drugs, including bath salts and mock-ups of ecstasy, being shipped into the U.S. from China and other nations.
So far, however, only four states have made Pink illegal. It can still be ordered legally on-line and delivered to your home. The internet has many websites a Google search away where the drug is available for as little as $5 plus shipping.
Melissa Davidson, mother of a Park City teen who had friends in common with the dead boys, showed NBC News on her home computer screen how easy it was to find the drug for sale with just a few keystrokes. "Look! There are like pages and pages that you can buy this stuff online."
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