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In the midst of the ongoing opioid epidemic, the drug in the spotlight has changed. The main cause of death is no longer prescription painkillers, but fentanyl, often mixed with heroin or another street drug.
Jefferson County is no different and has seen an increase in the use of fentanyl and overdoses this year, according to Stephen A. Jennings, Public Health Planner at Jefferson County Public Health Services. .
In 2018, there were 13 overdose deaths in the county, including eight due to fentanyl or a synthetic fentanyl.
However, compared to the last two years, the total number of overdoses has decreased. In 2016 – the highest year for overdoses from data beginning in 2000 – there were 23 overdoses, 16 opiates, including seven heroin and nine fentanyl. In 2017, the total number of overdoses decreased slightly to 18, including 12 from opiates, zero heroin and two from fentanyl.
In the United States, nearly 29,000 people have died from synthetic opioid overdoses, a category that experts say is dominated by fentanyl and its chemical cousins - a staggering increase in the 3,100 deaths reported in Canada. 2013.
One of the reasons for this increase is that the drug is so powerful that a packet the size of a sugar packet can contain 500 lethal doses. It also means that mail can be smuggled into what authorities call micro-expeditions, which are much more difficult to identify and prohibit than larger shipments of heroin, cocaine or marijuana.
Chinese companies send fentanyl in small quantities to resellers in the United States or Canada, but ship drugs in bulk to criminal cartels in Mexico. Cartels then mix synthetic products with heroin and other substances, or turn them into counterfeit pills. The product is then smuggled across the border.
While total seizures of fentanyl more than doubled last year, reaching 1,196 pounds, officials say an even larger amount of illicit drugs is passing. Some of the biggest busts of fentanyl have been in California because of the Mexican connection.
In September, for example, US Customs and Border Protection officers seized 52 pounds of fentanyl powder at the Pine Valley checkpoint near San Diego – and that was not a record . In December, police found about 20 pounds in a student's car.
This summer, authorities discovered 20,000 pills of fentanyl in the hidden compartment of a Mini Cooper at the San Ysidro checkpoint a week after confiscating 11,500 tablets in another vehicle.
US drug traffickers also buy directly in China with a few clicks of computer mice on company websites or in "drug bazaars on the Internet", where communications are encrypted and traffickers often pay with crypto-currencies or gift cards difficult to find.
Jennings said the ongoing reduction in overdoses could be linked to Jefferson County's efforts to build capacity and infrastructure to help residents affected by the opioid crisis. Even with the victory of fewer prescription opiate deaths, he drove drug addicts on the street to find a solution.
"Many states have tightened the regulation on the amount of opioids that doctors can prescribe, which has in part resulted in increased use of heroin and, more recently, fentanyl," said Dr. Jennings. . "If a prescription narcotic addict fails to procure a provider and a pharmacy, many people turn to heroin."
Fentanyl is also much harder to target, says Kristyna S. Mills, head of the Metro-Jefferson Drug Task Force. Most people who take fentanyl do not even realize it until it's too late, because it's usually sold as another drug, she said.
"People do not sell it as fentanyl; they call heroin hero. Only when we receive lab reports after an overdose will we realize that it contains fentanyl, "said Ms. Mills.
Anita K. Seefried-Brown, project director at the Alliance for Better Communities, said that in addition to the problems of targeting fentanyl, there is a lack of continuity with what constitutes a peak in overdoses.
"Is it a death, is it two? Is it more? Said Ms. Seefried-Brown.
To achieve this, Jefferson and St. Lawrence Counties are high-intensity drug trafficking zones, a drug control program set up by the United States Office of National Drug Control Policy. . This program includes an overdose detection mapping application program set up earlier this year to help collect relevant information about where overdoses occur.
Seefried-Brown said counties in the north of the country were in the early stages of implementing the program.
"When the police went to the scene, she would enter data on whether the overdose was fatal or not, how many doses of medication she had given on the premises, and so on. "All of this would go into a central database, which over time could be extremely helpful in strengthening the maintenance of order in this region or so that Narcan is readily available."
It is not difficult to find fentanyl and similar drugs on the Internet and sales tactics rival those of online retailers, according to federal investigators.
"A simple Google search of" fentanyl for sale "has found a number of potential sellers," said a report of the Senate Internal Security Committee released in January.
The investigators, "posing as a first-time buyer of fentanyl," had contacted six online salespeople abroad, and each was proposing to ship purchases to the United States – sometimes with an aggressive stance.
The sellers "have actively negotiated (…) an agreement by offering flash sales on some illicit opioids and reduced prices for bulk purchases," the report says. When investigators "failed to respond immediately to an offer, online vendors followed up proactively, sometimes offering larger discounts to encourage sales."
Fentanyl was developed decades ago as an ultra-potent analgesic – 100 times more potent than morphine – for use in surgery. It is still used to help cancer patients at the hospice level.
Drug traffickers started to get into drugs in the mid-2000s, but its popularity surged in 2014 and 2015 because it was easy to obtain and extremely profitable.
According to the DEA, a kilogram of $ 1,500 can generate profits of $ 1.5 million after the drug has been cut and sold on the street.
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