News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Power of Putnam Executive Director Bill Gibson said he is disappointed but not surprised that fentanyl numbers are drastically increasing.
A National Institute on Drug Abuse study found pill seizures by law enforcement have increased nearly 50-fold over the past three years. Gibson said homemade pills are a reason why the Upper Cumberland has seen an increase.
“People have found a way to get very realistic pill presses that create very hard to distinguish between the real thing,” Gibson said. “Instead of having what’s reported in the real medication, they have this fentanyl in them.”
According to the study, pills represent over a quarter of illicit fentanyl seizures by the end of 2021. Gibson said fentanyl is usually the active ingredient in homemade pills in the region. Gibson said criminal supply lines use the drug since it is cheap and easily transported.
“We’ve seen a big increase of counterfeit prescriptions,” Gibson said. “They are not the real prescriptions made in labs or in garages sometimes. They contain fentanyl and they are many times deadly. A single pill will a lot of times have a deadly amount of fentanyl in it.”
Due to this, overdose deaths are becoming more common, Gibson said. All it takes is a couple of grains of salt worth of fentanyl to kill someone, Gibson said.
“Everybody needs to understand that the problem is constantly evolving, and the supply lines are moving back to criminal supply lines,” Gibson said. “It’s not safe to take any medication or any pill that you do not receive from a prescription. Any other pill you by from another source has a high probability of being dangerous.”
