Fentanyl, the synthetic opioid pain reliever blamed for Prince’s death by accidental overdose, is hitting the streets illegally, and the results are deadly.

The drug is approved for physicians to prescribe for treating severe pain like the pain typically caused by advanced cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine and is legally prescribed in the form of transdermal patches or lozenges.

However, the CDC cites that most cases of harm, overdose and death related to fentanyl have been linked to illegally made fentanyl.

Even though illegal use of fentanyl is more common in other parts of the U.S., Coeur d’Alene Police Detective Jared Reneau said he has seen an increase in the past few months of overdoses related to the drug.

“I don’t remember having seen it in the past, maybe once or twice, but we’ve seen it quite a bit recently,” he said. “It’s not something we talk about and see every day, but over the last several months, we’ve had a rise in the amount of incidents we’ve seen related to fentanyl use.”

Ron Weaver, a pain patient who has been prescribed fentanyl and director of A Way Forward, a nonprofit dedicated to helping chronic pain patients, said he, too, has been hearing about the drug’s illegal use more and more. Weaver’s organization helps patients manage their pain and deal with dependence on prescribed opiates.

“From what I’m learning, fentanyl is easier and cheaper to produce than heroin, and street drugs like heroin are being cut with fentanyl, and people don’t know that’s what they’re getting,” he said. “I work with people who use fentanyl for pain and it has its place when administered properly, but when it’s not, it’s much more powerful than other opioids and can easily be overdosed.”

The CDC reports that deaths involving synthetic opioids, including fentanyl but not including methadone, increased 80 percent from 2013 to 2014. In 2014, 5,500 people in the U.S. died from overdoses involving synthetic opioids.

“According to data from the National Forensic Laboratory Information System, confiscations, or seizures, of fentanyl increased by nearly seven times from 2012 to 2014,” the CDC reported on its website. “This suggests that the sharp rise in fentanyl-related deaths may be due to increased availability of illegally made, non-pharmaceutical fentanyl and not prescribed fentanyl.”

Reneau said he didn’t know much about the availability of the drug here in North Idaho, but from what he and other law enforcement officers have seen, people seem to be overdosing on the drug more because they don’t understand its potency.

“It’s not that we want to educate people on how much to use,” he said. “But because they don’t know what they’re using or how to use it, that’s why we’re seeing an increase in the issues from fentanyl.”