In a confidential toxicology report obtained by the Associated Press on Monday (March 26th), it stated that the late icon Prince had an “exceedingly high” amount of fentanyl in his body at the time of his death. The report found that the singer died of an accidental overdose of the drug. The opioid was reported to be 50 times stronger than heroin.
“The amount in his blood is exceedingly high, even for somebody who is a chronic pain patient on fentanyl patches,” Dr. Lewis Nelson, chairman of emergency medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School (no connection to the investigation) told the AP.
Prince was 57 when he was found dead in an elevator at his Paisley Park complex on April 21, 2016.
Nelson also named the report “a pretty clear smoking gun,” as the concentration of the drug in Prince’s blood was 67.8 micrograms per liter. The report goes on to cites deaths of people with blood levels ranging from three to 58 micrograms per liter; the level of fentanyl in Prince’s liver was 450 micrograms per kilogram.
There was also what experts called a potentially lethal amount of fentanyl in Prince’s stomach. There is no set level that causes death owing to users’ differing tolerances for the drug.