Fentanyl Awareness

What's Happening

Deaths from fake pills with fentanyl are surging across the country and right here in our own school district. In 2020-21 we lost several students to fentanyl-related poisonings — teenagers who had hopes and dreams and plans. These teenagers had families who loved them and are still coming to grips with their losses.

Teens are purchasing what they think are OxyContin, Percoset, Adderall or Xanax pills via social media, but drug dealers are making these fake pills with the cheaper, stronger and more deadly synthetic drug called fentanyl to increase their profits. Fentanyl is up to 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. Fentanyl is odorless, tasteless and colorless. Teens never know what they’re getting. One pill can kill them. One pill.

Fentanyl filled pills are being sold in many forms, such as M30s, Percocet, Adderall, or Xanax, all looking exactly like legitimate pharmaceutical pills. Rainbow fentanyl pills are becoming more common, and many are concerned these brightly colored pills may be even more attractive to young people. The tablets are so well made that even experienced users say that they can’t tell the difference between a counterfeit pill and a pill manufactured by a pharmaceutical company. To be clear, these are not pharmaceutical-grade painkillers; they are pills made by drug dealers, mostly outside the country. There is no quality control. Pills in the same batch can have wildly varying levels of fentanyl. The amount of fentanyl is takes to overdose and die is equivalent to about two grains of sand. Fentanyl is also being found in street drugs such as molly/MDMA (Ecstasy), cocaine, heroin and more. Local investigators point to advertisements on social media platforms like Snapchat as a common source of the illicit pills. Officials say that young people find pills especially appealing because they’re cheap, more socially acceptable than meth or heroin and don’t have a tell-tale smell like alcohol or marijuana. 

In December 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a health alert because of an increase in synthetic opioids that hit the western United States — and the Interstate 5 corridor, in particular. 

In April 2022 The Oregon-Idaho High Intensity Drug Trafficking Team issued a Community Threat Bulletin due to the large amount of illicit fentanyl being found in our region. (Spanish Community Threat Bulletin)

DEA Laboratory Testing Reveals that 6 out of 10 Fentanyl-Laced Fake Prescription Pills Now Contain a Potentially Lethal Dose of Fentanyl  

In December 2022 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a MMWR report in which it stated “Urgent efforts to prevent overdose deaths among adolescents are needed and include educating about dangers of IMFs (illicitly manufactured fentanyls) and counterfeit pills.”