THE top United States agency combatting drug trafficking warned of a surge of “mass overdose” cases involving drugs like cocaine spiked with deadly amounts of fentanyl.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), in a letter to law enforcement authorities around the US, cited seven incidents in which multiple people overdosed and died in the same location after unintentionally ingesting fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, since January.

“In the past two months alone, there have been at least seven confirmed mass overdose events across the US, resulting in 58 overdoses and 29 overdose deaths.

“Many of the victims of these mass overdose events thought they were ingesting cocaine and had no idea that they were in fact ingesting fentanyl.”

The DEA cited one case on January 28, where 10 people on the same city block in Washington overdosed after ingesting crack cocaine laced with fentanyl. Nine of them died.

On March 4, at a homeless shelter in Austin, Texas, 21 people overdosed and three died after taking crack cocaine and methamphetamine that included fentanyl.

Other such overdoses took place in Colorado, Florida, Missouri and Nebraska, demonstrating the breadth of the problem.

“Fentanyl is highly addictive, found in all 50 states, and drug traffickers are increasingly mixing it with other types of drugs – in powder and pill form – in an effort to drive up addiction and attract repeat buyers,” said the DEA.

It said traffickers are putting fentanyl in fake prescription pills like OxyContin, Percocet and Vicodin that are popular among drug abusers.

According to the DEA, Fentanyl – which is cheap to make and deadly in minute amounts – and other synthetic opioids were involved in two thirds of the 105,000 US overdose deaths in the year to October 2021.

It told local law enforcement to assume that fentanyl is present in any drug they come across. – AFP, April 7, 2022.