While law enforcement isn’t sure whether Prince knew he was ingesting counterfeit opiates, an addiction specialist is.
Pills labeled as Watson 385 — a low-dose opiate painkiller — were reportedly found at the Purple One’s home. The actual medication inside the bottle was Fentanyl, the powerful opiate the 58-year-old fatally overdosed on.
“If you or I took a [Watson 385] that was really fentanyl, it would kill us,” expert Ben Levenson tells People, although he is not involved in Prince’s death case.
“It's a great way to disguise it and get it into the country, and also keep it in your house if your house gets searched."
It seems Ben believes Prince purposefully obtained the strong prescription pills, adding, "If they were indeed [Watson 385s], and came from our National Drug Supply, it would be chaos – they'd be shutting down the whole system.
“He didn't get hydrocodone disguised as fentanyl at Walgreens."
Police are still investigating what led to Prince's untimely death.
ORIGINAL (08/22/2016 at 10:45 a.m. ET):
Police already know Prince died of a fentanyl overdose this past April.
But now it looks like there’s more to the story, as authorities have found a mislabeled pill box in the music icon’s home.
Could the misbranded medication be what killed Prince?
The pills found in the late singer's Paisley Park estate were marked hydrocodone — the generic name for Vicodin — the Minneapolis Star Tribune writes.
What was actually inside the bottle was fentanyl, the drug Prince overdosed on.
While both medications are opioid pain relievers, fentanyl is much stronger — up to “100 times more powerful than morphine,” even.
The “Little Red Corvette” performer, 57, did not have a prescription for fentanyl.
Prince, who was reportedly just 112 pounds at the time of his death, had so much of the painkiller in his system, it “would have killed anyone, regardless of size,” an insider says.
It’s still unknown how the singer obtained the mislabeled pills and whether he knew what he was ingesting.
Authorities believe the Minnesota celeb’s overdose was completely “accidental” and part of a nationwide crisis of “deadly counterfeit pills.”
The DEA says drug traffickers have recently expanded the illegal fentanyl trade by making fake pills containing the synthetic opiate.
The investigation into Prince’s death and the mislabeled pills continues.
