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

MINNESOTA — Drugs cut with fentanyl are responsible for wave of fatal overdoses that already have killed more than two dozen people in several U.S. cities, and could make it to Minnesota’s streets, an official from the DEA told police across the country Wednesday.

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

Just this week, a Minnesota mother was charged with manslaughter after her 3-year-old ingested some fentanyl and died in 2020 in West Saint Paul.

Mother Was Complicit In 3-Year-Old Son's Fentanyl Overdose: Police

A mass-overdose event is one in which three or more people take a lethal dose in proximity of time and place. In recent months, such events have been reported 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.

In Minnesota in 2021, there were 1,296 drug overdose deaths- a 27.68 percent increase from 2020, in which there were 1,015 overdose deaths. The numbers could be even higher than that though, as the CDC said these numbers are underreported due to incomplete data.

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 Minnesota 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.