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Miami, Dec 16 A nurse in South Florida (USA) could face up to 10 years in prison for siphoning liquid fentanyl from surgical lines, which she refilled with saline solution and returned to an adulterated spot inside a hospital. Gave. locomotor surgery.
A South Florida federal grand jury indicted nurse S. Dunton, 54, for tampering with lines of liquid fentanyl at an outpatient surgery center, the attorney general’s office said Friday.
Martin County’s Dunton could face up to ten years in prison if found guilty of “tampering with medical grade fentanyl,” according to the prosecutor’s office.
The purpose the nurse pursued after receiving the liquid fentanyl was not specified in the statement.
Juan Antonio Gonzalez, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and Justin Fielder, Special Agent in the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigation (FDA-OCI), announced the charges against Danto.
“Medical providers,” the statement said, “use a liquid form of fentanyl (fentanyl citrate) during surgery to keep patients from moving and to relieve pain.”
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid fifty times more potent than heroin and a hundred times more potent than morphine. Just two milligrams of fentanyl is considered a lethal dose.
According to the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC), the country broke records for overdose deaths in 2021 with 107,622 registered cases, of which 66% were related to fentanyl.