DEA Warns Of 'Mass Overdose Events' From Fentanyl In Colorado

COLORADO — Illegal drugs cut with fentanyl to make them go further on the street are behind a deadly wave of overdoses that already have killed more than two dozen people in several U.S. cities, including Cortez and Commerce City in Colorado, the nation’s top drug official told police across the country Wednesday.

Federal and state law enforcement officials held a news conference Thursday in Colorado Springs to address the deadly overdoses, which they called "alarming."

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

A mass-overdose event is one in which three or more people take a lethal dose in proximity of time and place.

Three people died Sunday in Cortez, Colorado, after they ingested what they thought was oxycodone, officials said. They in fact took fake prescription pills that contained fentanyl, according to authorities.

Six people overdosed — five fatally — in Commerce City on Feb. 20 after they ingested what they thought was cocaine, but it was pure fentanyl, officials said.

In recent months, other mass overdoses have been reported in Wilton Manors, Florida; Austin, Texas; 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.

Since 2015, more than 1,800 people have died from drug overdose deaths in Colorado, the data shows.

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 Colorado 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.