“We’re seeing fentanyl here quite a bit,” he told The Herald Journal.

The drug and those who manufacture it on the black market — including drug cartels in Mexico — are not prejudiced. The opioid has the potential to impact anyone. And it kills with as little deliberation. For the cartels it is all about the money; for the user it’s the high.

“We had a 15-year-old here in the valley who may have died of fentanyl” in recent months, Barber said. The cartels are, in fact, finding new ways to target young people.

The big picture: nationwide, illegal opioid use is a problem of epic proportions and fentanyl is the most lethal of all opioids, authorities say.

“It’s scary stuff,” Barber said. “Every pill is a possible overdose death.”

A KILLING DRUGNational statistics point to the highly lethal nature of fentanyl. According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, for instance, fentanyl is a factor in more than half (53%) of overdose deaths.

What people who use the drug may not know is that only 2 milligrams — or less than 0.007% of an ounce — of fentanyl “causes certain death.”

In 2020, the latest numbers released by the NCDAS, nearly 43,000 individuals died of fentanyl overdose. Fentanyl leads the charge — 25% — on the recreational drug toxicity list. Heroin follows at 20%.

In a broader picture of the opioid problem, 10 adults in Utah die each week from drug overdose, eight of which are the result of opioids. Of that number, four of them due to prescription opioids, according to information from the Utah Department of Health.

“Utah is particularly affected by prescription opioids, which are responsible for 41% of the unintentional and undetermined drug poisoning deaths in the state,” according to the health department.

Specifically, however, most fentanyl-related deaths in the US “are linked to illicitly manufactured fentanyl,” a class of medicines called narcotic analgesic that has been classified as being “50 to 100 times more than potent morphine,” the health department says.

According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the problem isn’t getting better.

“It’s getting worse,” said Dustin Gillespie, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA’s Rocky Mountain Division. “The DEA sees as our greatest threat the opioid epidemic flooding our communities with these poisonous pills. All we see are exponential increases in the volume of pills we’re seizing.”

And that includes Utah, he said, explaining that the state has remained consistent with the number of drug overdoses but noting “the percentage of overdose deaths is increasing dramatically.”

ENOUGH TO KILL EVERY AMERICAN

During 2022, the DEA’s Rocky Mountain Division — which oversees Utah, Colorado, Montana and Wyoming — seized more than 5.8 million potentially deadly doses of fentanyl. That includes nearly 2 million fentanyl pills and more than 150 pounds of fentanyl powder.

Nationwide, the agency announced that by December it had seized more than 50.6 million fentanyl pills and more than 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder.

Pointing to the grim outlook, the DEA Laboratory estimated that the seizures represent more than 379 million potentially deadly doses of fentanyl, which equates to enough fentanyl to kill every American.

“For the first time in my 31-year law enforcement career, we are seeing an oversaturated drug market. Anyone, including our kids, can buy dangerous and deadly drugs at the click of a button,” Special Agent in Charge Brian Besser of the Rocky Mountain Division said in a prepared statement. “This is like nothing we’ve experienced before and it makes our jobs as narcotics officers far more challenging and critical than ever before.

“We are geographically at the crossroads of the west; and this quite literally places the Rocky Mountain Division on the front lines in the fight to save lives.”

Besser said he is committed to making sure his agents do what they can to mitigate the problem as much as possible. But at times it seems like an uphill battle.

“You have my pledge that we will continue to do everything within our ability to keep this poison from reaching your communities,” he said.

Gillespie told The Herald Journal that many drug users are switching from heroin to fentanyl because it gives the same sort of high, and the cartels like it because there isn’t as much overhead making the drug.

“From the cartels’ perspective, it is a very lucrative business,” Gillespie said. “It’s very cheap to make.”

Unlike heroin, which is grown and cultivated in a field and is impacted by the elements, fentanyl is a synthetic drug often “made in a kitchen or broom closet” without regulatory oversight. One pill may contain very little fentanyl, he said, while another may have much more than the lethal dose.

He said cartels are always refining their processes. And their nefarious efforts travel northward because, pertaining to the western region, they send the drug up through the southern states into Utah and over to Colorado and beyond. He said interstates 15 and 70 are corridors, allowing the popular drug to get into communities previously untouched by it.

And because the market is saturated, some pills and powder are now found on the cheap, increasing users’ access to the illicit drug and, as such, potentially upping the death toll.

‘USERS DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY’RE GETTING INTO’

Gillespie said the drug is becoming more problematic but seems to especially attract those ages 18-34. And former heroin users have turned to fentanyl is because it has taken away the stigma of using needles.

“It’s much easier to just pop a pill into the mouth,” he said. “It appears to be so much more innocent this way when it is a thousand times more deadly. And it’s so easy to target young people.”

Gillespie said social media, especially TikTok, has been used to target young people. He gives this scenario: “Stories are out there where a young son is in the bedroom. He’s in there purchasing pills from somebody at school while the rest of the family is watching TV. That’s how it enters the home. You think your family is safe but social media is how these cartels are able to reach into your home. It’s frightening.”

The cartels, he continued, are always finding new ways to attract potential new users, both young people and adults. For instance, they have started making blue pills that look like OxyContin, even going so far as to imprint them with what appears to be a manufacturer’s logo. These blue pills might more easily attract adults, thinking they’re getting prescription-made pills, when in fact they’re getting something much more dangerous. Cartels also create pills speckled with different colors.

“Their primary audience with these pills are young adults and youth,” he said. “These cartels know no bounds. … A lot of users don’t even know what they’re getting into. They don’t know that they’re taking fentanyl. They don’t know that they’re ingesting a fake OxyContin pill when in fact they are made in a dirty broom closet down in Mexico with no quality control.”

Fentanyl is a depressant that decreases how pain messages are transmitted throughout the body and changes how messages from the central nervous system are relayed. They are prescribed for pain by doctors but can, as with other opioids, cause euphoria. It can affect the heart and attacks the respiratory system.

Gillespie said a person with a high tolerance might not die from 2 milligrams of fentanyl — though they might very well — but a new user likely would. It is that lethal. And a problem with using an illicit drug is that one never knows what they might be getting.

“One pill (on the black market) might not have any fentanyl,” he said, “but another might have 9 milligrams — enough to kill even the hard-time user. … It slows the respiratory system. That’s what these drugs do, they target the respiratory system.”

‘WE HAVE THE SAME PROBLEMS HERE AS EVERYWHERE ELSE’

Locally, Sgt. Barber said marijuana and meth are still more popular street drugs in Cache Valley, but fentanyl is coming in at a close third. Barber, in a follow up interview on Friday, said just that morning another fentanyl-related arrest was made in Logan.

“It’s a plague that’s now coming here,” he said, noting that it showed up in the valley more prevalently only within the last six to eight months.

“It’s getting worse. We’re seeing more of it. It’s more prevalent here than it used to be,” he said. “We’re hearing about it more on the streets, there are more seizures of it.”

But his department and other law agencies remain vigilant against the fight. Some efforts locally by police are offering presentations about the dangers of the drug and other substances to people and groups wherever they can — during health classes and at high schools and even at hotels and motels. The police department also hosts social media campaigns that teach about the drug’s dangers. More of those are in the works, Barber said.

On a Facebook post by the department on Feb. 13, it was related that the Cache Rich Drug Task Force, which investigates controlled substance violations in Cache and Rich counties, had investigated 483 cases in 2022, seizing more than 85 pounds of marijuana, over three pounds of methamphetamine, five pounds of psilocybin mushrooms, and 137 illegally possessed firearms.

“Over the past several years, our jurisdiction has seen a decrease of seizures and arrests for cocaine possession and distribution,” the post reads, noted “in 2022, we have seen a reemergence of cocaine, as well as counterfeit pills containing fentanyl, which are plaguing the entire nation.”

Barber knows the war against fentanyl and other illicit drugs is one that won’t be won overnight, if at all, but in the fight to save lives, it’s a worthy battle to engage.

“We never thought we’d see heroin here,” he said. “But we saw it 10 or 15 years ago. Now we’re seeing fentanyl. We think of Cache Valley as a hidden gem, and it is in many ways, but we have the same problems here as everywhere else.”