The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) warned the public of a dangerous rise in fentanyl throughout the nation. Mass-overdose events occurred within the past couple of months in at least seven cities across the United States. A total of fifty-eight overdoses and twenty-nine deaths related to fentanyl were reported.
According to a letter sent by the DEA on April 6 to local, state, and federal law enforcement, a mass-overdose event is when at least three overdoses occur in close proximity, including the time and location.
Fentanyl is found in all fifty states. A press release from the DEA said the cities where the mass-overdose events have occurred are: Commerce City, Colo., Cortez, Colo., Wilton Manors, Fla., St. Louis, Mo., Omaha, Neb., Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C.
The DEA reports that drug dealers sell cocaine laced with fentanyl. They also sell pills that look like prescription medications like Percocet, Vicodin, and OxyContin but have fentanyl mixed in. Fentanyl can be present in powder or pill form. Two milligrams of fentanyl can cause death.
“Tragically, many overdose victims have no idea they are ingesting deadly fentanyl until it’s too late,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said.
Fentanyl is a highly addictive synthetic opioid that is one hundred times more potent than morphine. It was created for pharmaceutical use to treat pain in cancer patients. Traffickers use fentanyl in street drugs to drive sales because it is highly addictive.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that over 105,000 U.S. citizens died of overdoses between October 2020 and October 2021. Around 66% of those overdoses were related to synthetic opioids.
Last year, fentanyl caused more deaths than car accidents and gun incidents. The DEA agency said they “seized more than 15,000 pounds of fentanyl — four times the amount seized in 2017 — which is enough to kill every American.”
For the first three months of 2022, the DEA seized one million fake pills and almost 2,000 pounds of fentanyl across the United States.
In March, Ohio police seized pills that looked like Tylenol but were a combination of cocaine and fentanyl. This week, authorities arrested two drug traffickers in Orange County, Calif., and seized enough fentanyl from the suspects to kill 4.7 million people.
The DEA supports law enforcement while dealing with nationwide overdoses. They will help with investigations and locating the dealers and responsible drug trafficking organizations. The DEA will also provide resources to law enforcement and help to warn the public.
Sheriff Dennis M. Lemma, the president of Major County Sheriffs of America, said, “We must utilize all available resources to combat the opioid and fentanyl epidemic that continues to plague this great nation. In addition to those resources, we must shift how we respond to an overdose, no longer treating them as accidental deaths but instead as a homicide crime scene. These individuals are victims of a greater problem, and we are committed to putting an end to these deaths.”
