10K ‘Rainbow’ Fentanyl Pills Seized In South Jersey: Prosecutor

BURLINGTON COUNTY - A 33-year-old Florida man was arrested in the parking lot of Mount Laurel Walmart on Route 73 this week in connection with the seizure of 10,000 “rainbow” fentanyl pills, authorities said.

Shane Smith, of Daytona Beach, was charged with two counts of distribution of a controlled dangerous substance after the seizure of pills worth roughly $40,000 on the street, the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.

Smith is being lodged in the Burlington County Jail in Mount Holly pending a detention hearing in Superior Court. Further details of the investigation, which began earlier this month, are not being released at this time, officials said.

The seized multicolored pills, known as “rainbow” fentanyl, may be a new method used by drug cartels to sell highly addictive and potentially deadly fentanyl made to look like candy to children and young people, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, with the fentanyl available in the U.S. primarily supplied by two criminal drug networks, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) in Mexico.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine, according to the federal agency. Just two milligrams of fentanyl (or around 10 to 15 grains of table salt) is considered a lethal dose. However, street drug experts and even Mexican cartel operatives have said the colors of the drugs has nothing to do with children, and isn’t actually anything new.

Dr. Sheila Vakharia, head of research at the Drug Policy Alliance, told NPR that dealers use colors and other identifiers "to distinguish their product from other products on the street."

A Sinaloa Cartel operative told Insider that the coloring of the fentanyl pills "is to make it look different than coke or white heroin”.

Nevertheless, fentanyl remains the deadliest illicit drug in the United States. Per data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 107,622 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, with 66 percent of those deaths related to synthetic opioids like fentanyl.

Drug poisonings also serve as the leading killer of Americans between the ages of 18 and 45, according to the CDC data.