Shaena Taylor

Battling the Opiate Epidemic

Shaena Taylor, ’08 BS

Somewhere in the shadows, in secret labs all over the world, criminal chemists are working to create new forms of highly addictive and potentially deadly opioids.

Shaena Taylor uses chemistry, too, as she works to halt the deadly opiate epidemic. As senior chemist in the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Regional Crime Lab, she analyzes the chemical makeup of an ever-changing array of narcotics seized in the greater Cleveland area every day.

“We’re on the front lines, helping local, state and federal law enforcement to prosecute criminals,” said Taylor, a 2008 YSU grad with a BS in Forensic Science. “We’re the first to know what’s out there.”

What’s out there, she said, is a rapidly expanding assortment of drug combinations, most containing fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid analgesic, similar to morphine but 50 to 100 times more potent. A Schedule II prescription drug used for pain management, it is also highly addictive.

When she started at the Medical Examiner’s office in 2008, first as an intern and then as a chemist trainee, most drug crimes she saw involved marijuana, crack and powdered cocaine. By 2015, heroin had become common, and her office reported 14 different opioid combinations that year.

In 2016 they started seeing fentanyl analogs – a combination of fentanyl and heroin – and reported 86 different opioid combinations. This year the variety of mixtures has continued to climb exponentially – the total hit 176 in just the first six months of 2017.

“They are looking for ways to alter the structure of the drug. They want to increase the effect, if they can, and avoid prosecution,” she explained. “Sometimes, if the formula is changed just a little bit, it will produce a high but it won’t be considered a controlled substance.”

Taylor and her crime lab colleagues handle evidence that law enforcement officers seize from cars, houses, apartments, from suspects, and from the mail, and she regularly testifies about the department’s findings in court.

She and her colleagues have observed that a majority of the drugs seized in Cleveland from international mail sources originate in China. “They come up with these compounds and ship them around the world,” she said.

Ohio lawmakers have legislation in place that gives police the power to prosecute drug offenders, even when the drugs’ chemical formulas have been altered, Taylor said, but most states do not. Her job, and that of the five other chemists in the crime lab, is to analyze the exact chemical composition and to help police determine whether a seized drug is legal.

Ohio is among the states hardest hit by the nationwide opioid epidemic, and the Cleveland, Dayton and Cincinnati areas have the highest overdose and death rates. That means more cases and longer hours for everyone in the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s office, said Taylor – the Crime Lab’s workload has increased 160 percent in the past three years, its staff now handling more than 6,000 cases a year.

Her extensive experience has made Taylor a respected authority in the analysis of opioids and fentanyl analogs. She was invited to speak on the topic at an international conference in August, the meeting of the Clandestine Laboratory Investigators Association in Phoenix, and has also published a professional journal article on the topic.

Working in the midst of the escalating and tragic opioid crisis could take its toll on anyone, but Taylor has learned to cope. “You have to learn to compartmentalize,” she said. “You keep your home life and your work life separate. You can’t let it get to you.”