House Passes Bill Cracking Down on Fentanyl

By ADAM SWIFT (Patch Staff)

The Massachusetts House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would make it a crime to traffic fentanyl.

The bill makes it a state crime punishable by up to 20 years in state prison for someone who sells more than 10 grams of fentanyl.

The bill passed the House 152-0 and now goes onto the Senate.

“As a co-sponsor of this bill, I was pleased to see us take swift action to provide our law enforcement with this important new tool to combat the opiate problem in our communities,” said State Rep. Paul Brodeur of Wakefield.

The bill has the support of state Attorney General Maura Healey.

Fentanyl is a potent opioid used as a painkiller in medical treatment and can be up to 50 times more potent than heroin.

Medically, it is used to curb pain resulting from major traumas such as childbirth or battle wounds. This painkiller is often administered in a gel based patch delivery system, as well as in lozenge form. It may also be injected intravenously or taken in tablet form. The narcotic makes its way to the streets by theft from pharmacies, medical fraud, and illicit manufacturing, according to Brodeur.

According to law enforcement officials, drug dealers sometimes mix fentanyl with heroin, which can be fatal in low doses.

“To give you a sense of just how rapidly this drug has entered out communities, our state and local laboratories reported 942 fentanyl submissions for analysis in 2013,” said Brodeur. “In 2014, that number, more than tripled to 3,344 submissions. The human cost has been devastating as well. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health reports 1,250 heroin and opioid deaths in 2014, which represents a 57 percent increase in deaths since 2012.”