Earlier this year, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol made the largest bust of illegal fentanyl in the country’s history, seizing 254 pounds of the deadly drug at the southern border. It was just the latest in a long line of stories and data indicating that this synthetic drug is uniquely dangerous for American citizens, their families and our communities.<\/p>\n
You don’t have to look very hard to understand why the current stage of the opioid epidemic is perhaps the most dangerous. While deaths associated with painkillers and heroin are still far too common, fentanyl accounted for nearly half of the 72,000 drug overdoses in 2017, up from only six percent in 2012. One of the many reasons fentanyl is so dangerous is because amounts barely discernable to the naked eye, mixed with heroin, can still be deadly.<\/p>\n
[The opioid crisis costs Alaska more than $1B per year]<\/a><\/ins><\/p>\n Alaska hasn’t been spared the scourge of this drug. According to a report from the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services Section of Epidemiology, 28 people died from fentanyl overdoses in 2017 — up from five in 2016. That’s a nearly six-fold increase in just a year, and fentanyl continues to increase as a percentage of opioid-related deaths. Though no segment of the population is immune, fentanyl has hit the Alaska Native community particularly hard.<\/p>\n One reason that fentanyl has become such a big problem in a relatively short amount of time is that it is not subject to new Food and Drug Administration regulations designed to crack down on prescription drug abuse. Often manufactured illegally in China, fentanyl usually enters undetected via both our southern and northern borders. This can be done as simply as mailing a package through the U.S. Postal Service.<\/p>\n