Investigators looking into pop legend Prince’s death believe that counterfeit pills may have killed him, a report said on Monday. The Star Tribune, the daily newspaper in Prince’s hometown of Minneapolis, said that authorities turned to the theory after seizing pills from Prince’s Paisley Park estate. The confiscated pills were marked as hydrocodone, a commonly prescribed drug for moderate pain relief, but in fact contained fentanyl, an intensely powerful painkiller for which Prince had no prescription. Read: Prince treated for ‘drug overdose’ six days before deathIn his death, Prince became the highest-profile victim of a US epidemic of painkiller addiction. The federal agency said that hundreds of thousands of counterfeit painkiller pills were on the US market, many containing fentanyl that was mass-produced in labs in China.

Source: Hindustan Times August 22, 2016 14:37 UTC