DEA Warns Of 'Mass Overdose Events' From Fentanyl: See Arizona Data

ARIZONA — The manufacturers of illegal drugs are cutting their products with fentanyl to make them go further on the street, causing a spike in deadly overdoses that already killed more than two dozen people across the country, and could make it to southern Arizona, the Drug Enforcement Administration told police across the country Wednesday.

DEA head Anne Milgram said in the letter to local, state and federal law enforcement officials that recently, 29 people have died in 58 “mass-overdose events” in seven U.S. cities.

A mass-overdose event means that three or more people have taken a lethal dose of the same drug during approximately the same time while in the same general area. In recent months, mass overdose events happened in Wilton Manors, Florida; Austin, Texas; Cortez, Colorado; Commerce City, Colorado; Omaha, Nebraska; St. Louis, Missouri; and Washington, D.C.

Natural and synthetic opioids are a scourge everywhere, though illegally manufactured fentanyl makes them more dangerous, “killing Americans at an unprecedented rate,” Milgram said in a news release.

Two-thirds of the 105,750 people who died of drug overdoses in the 12-month period ending in October 2021 were using synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, according to provisional data published last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In fact, the DEA said, fentanyl killed more Americans than guns and traffic crashes combined.

From October 2018 to September 2019 In Maricopa County, around 75 percent of overdose deaths involved prescription opioids and fentanyl, according to the Maricopa County Department of Public Health.

During the same time period, there were 1,389 drug overdose deaths in the county.

In 2021, there were 498 fatal drug overdoses in Pima County, and fentanyl was the most common drug involved in fatal overdoses, contributing to 295 deaths, according to the Pima County Health Department. In December 2021 alone, there were 33 deaths in Pima County from fentanyl overdoses, a 94 percent increase from the previous month.

Pharmaceutical fentanyl is about 100 times more potent than opioids and has a legitimate purpose, but drug cartels also mix it up in clandestine labs and smuggle it into the United States through Mexico for the black market, according to the DEA. On the streets, cocaine is laced with fentanyl to make it more powerful or stretch the base product, or it’s pressed into pills as passed off as legitimate prescription pills such as Percocet, Vicodin or OxyContin.

Because there is no official oversight or quality control, the counterfeit pills often contain lethal doses of fentanyl.

“Drug traffickers are driving addiction, and increasing their profits, by mixing fentanyl with other illicit drugs,” Milgram said. “Tragically, many overdose victims have no idea they are ingesting deadly fentanyl, until it's too late."

Illegally produced fentanyl is found in all 50 states. Opioid deaths increased more than 28 percent in the 12-month period ending in April 2021, according to the most recent report on opioid morbidity in the United States.

The DEA said it is ready to step in and assist law enforcement officials in Arizona to trace mass-overdose events back to local drug dealers and the international cartels behind the surging domestic supply of fentanyl.

So far this year, the DEA has seized almost 2,000 pounds of fentanyl and 1 million fake pills. Last year, the agency seized more than 15,000 pounds of fentanyl, four times as much as was confiscated in 2017.

That’s enough to kill every American, the agency said.