NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – In Tennessee, drug overdoses are at their highest levels yet. The Tennessee Department of Health says the biggest contributing factor for the increase in overdoses is fentanyl.
The health department has had a warning about fentanyl on the front page of its website since last year. It warns people that the highly deadly substance is now being commonly found in street drugs and counterfeit pills.
The Drug Enforcement Agency says it has never seen anything like fentanyl before and what they’re seeing is scary.
“I’ve been in law enforcement 31 years and 20 years with the DEA and I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said DEA Agent Stan Jones. “We will not arrest our way out of this. Law enforcement is not going to arrest this to an end. We need an all fronts approach to this.”
Jones says fentanyl has changed the way law enforcement operates. Officers must now carry Narcan and wear protective gloves and clothing when seizing drugs or dealing with overdoses because they might come in contact with it. He says two grains of salt worth of fentanyl is enough to kill if it’s ingested, breathed, or even touched.
Jones says dealers are putting fentanyl in most drugs, including cocaine and methamphetamine, but mostly it’s found in counterfeit pills.
A dealer can buy fentanyl from China via the dark web. It could then be shipped via USPS, UPS or FedEx right to a dealer’s front door. Then, using a pill press and dye, the shoddy scientist makes a counterfeit pill.
“These pills are being manufactured by people, some of which don’t have a high school education, and are making them in their bathroom or on their garage floor or living by very crude means by something that is lethal,” Jones says.
Jones says it’s also very difficult to intercept fentanyl because it is legal.
“It’s a legal controlled substance in a hospital or medical setting,” he says. “So to have to differentiate that presents it’s own complications.”
In 2016, two people died and over a dozen overdosed in a 24-hour period in Rutherford County. People thought they were purchasing Percocet, but were actually buying counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl that were made in a Madison home.
Jones says anything from small, local organizations to large, international drug rings are making counterfeit pills to make loads of money.
“Criminal organizations are cashing in on that kind of profit margin to capitalize on the money to be made at the peril of the drug user,” said Jones.
In 2016, 1,186 people who died from drug overdoses had opioids in their system. Jones believes the numbers for 2017 will be much worse.