The family of Indianapolis Colts quarterback Sam Ehlinger recently revealed that their younger son, Jake, age 20, had died from an accidental fentanyl overdose in May. His family said he took a Xanax that had been laced with a deadly dose of fentanyl. “We pray that sharing Jake’s story will help shed light on this problem and prevent other families from also tragically losing a loved one,” the family said in a statement.
During U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s hearing last week in front of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., spoke of his college-aged nephew, Eli Weinstock, whom he said died this past year of an accidental overdose after consuming a legal herbal supplement tainted with fentanyl.
For the first time in six years, the DEA released a public warning in September due to a huge increase in these counterfeit pills marketed as prescription pain medications manufactured and sold to unsuspecting Americans that are actually laced with deadly doses of fentanyl and methamphetamine. The DEA warned that pills bought from anywhere other than a pharmacy are potentially lethal.
The DEA has seized more than 9.5 million counterfeit pills this year, more than what was seized in the prior two years combined. Forty percent of those pills contain a lethal dose of fentanyl, according to Derek Maltz, a former special agent for the DEA. Moreover, the number of pills laced with fentanyl has soared 430 percent since 2019. --->READ MORE HERE
Fentanyl seizures by federal law enforcement inspecting goods and people attempting to enter the United States from abroad shot up over the past 12 months, more than doubling the record-high level confiscated a year earlier.
The surge in U.S. Customs and Border Protection seizures at the nation’s border is closely connected to the surge of drug overdose deaths occurring deep inside the U.S., which also hit a new high this year as a result of the prevalence of opioids.
“If they're seizing a lot, it's because a lot is coming in — because you don't know the percentage of how much is coming through that they're actually seizing,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.
Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, said fentanyl is easier to produce and transport than other drugs.
"Only a very small concentration of fentanyl is needed in order to produce a high. So, this makes it much easier to bring fentanyl across the border — in smaller, but more potent, quantities than other drugs," Volkow wrote in an email.
"Based on the number of drug seizures reported in 2020 for fentanyl, it appears that the illicit drug market did not suffer during the pandemic, but actually expanded," Volkow added. "Rising fentanyl availability, decreased access to addiction treatment, increased social and economic stressors, and overburdened health departments collided in 2020 and were associated with a tragic rise in overdose deaths." --->READ MORE HEREFollow link below to a related story:
Mexican Cartels’ Fentanyl Operations Benefit from Migrant Border Crisis
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