The Summers County Sheriff’s Department’s investigations are still underway to learn more about the fentanyl drug traffic into the county.
Over a week ago, Sheriff Justin Faris and the entire team of Summers County deputies conducted a productive drug bust in Meadow Creek. One arrest was made, but more are expected.
Faris said last week that the bust was “one of the biggest fentanyl arrests in the county’s history. It’s a great win for us. Someone called in a tip that launched an investigation, and the team of five confiscated enough fentanyl to potentially kill 500 people. One person was arrested and more arrests will follow.”
The one arrest resulted in charges of felony possession of fentanyl, felony child endangerment, felony conspiracy. The ballpark street value, he said, is estimated to be around $10,000.
Statistics on overdoses from fentanyl or from the heroin two-drug cocktail are rising at an alarming rate, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Chief Deputy T.S. Adkins shared a photo of two vials comparing the lethal amount of heroin versus fentanyl. Fentanyl, Adkins said, is 50 and sometimes even 100 times more potent than morphine.
Adkins said “We have seen a large number of fentanyl heroin overdoses in the past six months. As little as two milligrams will kill a person quick. We recovered 90 100-microgram patches that release a dose every hour for 72 hours.”
To put that into perspective, most pharmacies prescribe 25-microgram doses, Adkins said. It is a Drug Enforcement Agency Schedule II drug, so it has medicinal uses for severe or chronic pain, according to the CDC.
The recent combination of fentanyl patches, which work like nicotine patches and can deliver timed doses over a 72-hour period, and guns confiscated along with the stash of the drug, have law enforcement highly focused, Adkins said.
The patches said Atkins, “are usually given to people who are terminally ill and dying.” Fentanyl, he explained, is an opiate and puts users in a euphoric state, almost sleeping.
Overdose deaths are on the rise, and the CDC says the pandemic has apparently played a role in drug abuse and subsequent overdoses. Over a 12-month period ending last year around this time, 81,000 people lost their lives to overdoses, the CDC report stated. The report issued late last year showed synthetic opiates (fentanyl) led to an increase over the year before, as much as 38%.
Chief Deputy Adkins pointed to overdose sources for additional research showing how rapidly drug abuse of synthetics is causing rising. Fentanyl and synthetics were responsible for 36,000 deaths last year, according to information from the CDC.
