Our program this week was given by two outstanding local attorneys, Keith Giblin, our District Attorney for Jefferson County and Brit Featherston with the US Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Texas. Mr. Giblin began the program saying he could have told us today what a great job they are doing fighting crime in our area and talk about some of the cases they are pursuing and programs they have begun, but they have a message for us that, in their minds, was of utmost importance for us to hear. That message is the danger that the drug Fentanyl poses for our country today. This drug is taking the innocent lives of kids that have no idea what they are taking. Mr. Giblin and Mr. Featherston have begun a campaign to inform as much of the public as possible about the dangers this drug presents to primarily the younger segment of our population today.

Mr. Featherston told us this really isn’t about the alleyway addict you think of behind a dumpster with a needle in their arm. It involves prescription drugs on the street that have been blended with Fentanyl to make them stronger. The problem is that the mixing is done much like a chocolate chip cookie, where you may get a cookie that only has a few chocolate chips, but another one is just loaded with chocolate chips. With Fentanyl you cannot see how much of it is in the pill you are taking, and if it has too much, it can stop your breathing.

Last spring five West Point cadets overdosed on Fentanyl. Last summer the University of Texas had thirteen overdoses of Fentanyl in one weekend. Because of that they started putting Narcan in all their dorms and handing it out to their sororities and fraternities. Narcan is administered like a nose spray and has been found to be very effective in reviving those who have stopped breathing from a Fentanyl overdose.

It is not uncommon for athletes that suffer an injury and are prescribed painkillers to seek street drugs when their prescription runs out. These street drugs may be mixed with Fentanyl and if there is too much in a pill due to improper mixing, and it doesn’t take much, the person can overdose and stop breathing. Several years ago, the head of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) saw that the problem with Fentanyl overdose would become so bad, she decided to post a picture of each person that dies from an overdose on the wall at the DEA headquarters. There have now been so many, they have had to start adding walls to make more room.

In 2021 if you add up all the gun related deaths and all the vehicle related deaths, there were 91,769 of those deaths in the United States. There were 124,000 Fentanyl related deaths that same year in the US. Mr. Featherston then told us a little Sweet-and-Low packet full of Fentanyl was enough to kill everyone in the room. The Mexican cartels are mixing Percocet, cocaine, Oxycontin, Adderall, methamphetamine and any other drugs they sell on the street with Fentanyl in their warehouses, shacks, garages on both sides of the border. Fentanyl makes that drug stronger and more addictive, and it doesn’t take much. But their mixing process is very crude – in a vat with little control of how well it is mixed. This is why it is compared to a chocolate chip cookie. One kilo of Fentanyl costs $15,000 and is enough to kill everyone in the state of Texas. A fifty-thousand-dollar investment in Fentanyl will make $1.5 million for the cartels. This process is very lucrative to the cartels. Fentanyl is also being added to Xanax, and people have even overdosed recently when vaping.

Mr. Featherston said the problem is like a tsunami hovering above us. Law enforcement has increased the penalties for selling drugs laced with Fentanyl, but the problem continues to grow. This is why he and Mr. Giblin are trying to get the message to as much of the public as they can. They would be happy to give this presentation to any group, especially teenage groups, but also all the way up to age 45. These are the ages that the problem is most common. Furthermore, they encouraged people to keep a bottle of Narcan on hand if you can get one