Fentanyl: Fast, Frugal, and Fatal
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OREGON IS FACING A FENTANYL EPIDEMIC. HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE DRUG.
two milligrams. The community is seeing a serious increase in overdose cases and street-drugs testing positive for lethal amounts of fentanyl. Here’s an analysis of what this all means.
By Tori Thorp and Brogan O’Hare Photos by Tori Thorp
JUST 76.4 MILES FROM WEST
“The potency and addiction associated with fentanyl is so high,” said School Resource Officer Curtis Bell, “fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, it doesn’t rely on Mother Nature, it’s less expensive to make. And so the potency can be much greater.” Potency isn’t the only issue that fentanyl presents. The extreme effects of the drug present a problem because of how available it is to dealers as a cheap, unscented, maskable “filler” for counterfeit pills such as Xanax, Prozac, and other off-the-street opioids and stimulants. In some cases, even off-the-street marijuana has tested positive for fentanyl. Bell explained that the sheer diversity of the drug is contributing to the frequency of it being seen in Linn county among all age groups. “I don’t see it affecting one demographic more than the other. And that’s what’s so frightening about it,” Bell said. “it’s from age eight, nine, all the way up to 90. All types of people.” At the end of 2019, per the United States Drug Enforcement Admin-
lies McDaniel High School, where two students lost their lives to suspected accidental drug overdoses on March 6 and 7 of 2022. The drug? Fentanyl. During a presentation hosted by the Albany Police Department on April 12, officers from the Linn Interagency Narcotics Enforcement Team educated a full conference room of community members about the drug and its effects in the Linn county area. They described Fentanyl as a synthetic opioid, and while it can be used in clinical settings and to treat serious pain, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that it can be “up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine,” giving it its addictive nature.
T H E W H I R LW I N D
IN RECENT YEARS, the fentanyl crisis in Linn County has worsened, with as many as two out of every five street-bought pills containing a lethal dose of the drug: just
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