During a roundtable discussion this month in Vancouver, a recovering addict delivered a powerful summary of the scourge that is fentanyl.
“I just accepted the fact that I was going to die on the street, probably in the gutter,” said Aaron Lopez during a meeting with Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., local law enforcement, health providers and first responders. “And a lot of the times I would use in public just for the fact that if I OD’d, someone would find my body and tell my family what happened to me.”
The story is hardly unique. Washington experienced the sharpest rise in overdoses among any U.S. state last year, with most of the increase attributed to fentanyl. And Dr. Kevin Fischer, medical director at Columbia River Mental Health Services, said the number of people seeking treatment has doubled in the last few years.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last year, more than 75,000 U.S. deaths were attributed to synthetic opioids — primarily fentanyl.
In response, Cantwell has been conducting listening sessions throughout the state to glean information about the issue. She also supports the FEND Off Fentanyl Act, which has been folded into the National Defense Authorization Act. The legislation would target the finances of international fentanyl traffickers.
Indeed, fentanyl is a matter of national security, with ingredients typically manufactured in China and then smuggled through Mexico. But the facts often are obscured in debates about how to combat the drug.
Critics claim that undocumented immigrants crossing the southern border are to blame for a spike in fentanyl supply in this country. But officials report that 90 percent of the fentanyl they have seized has been at official ports of entry rather than in illegal crossings. In 2021, 86 percent of people convicted of fentanyl trafficking were U.S. citizens.
As a headline from the libertarian Cato Institute read in 2022, “Fentanyl Is Smuggled for U.S. Citizens by U.S. Citizens, Not Asylum Seekers.” And as a headline read in The Seattle Times on Tuesday, “Fentanyl gets into WA in ‘any manner you can think of.’ ”
It also is appearing in any form you can think of, often mixed in with other drugs. In 2021, Clark County Public Health issued a warning: “Anyone who uses powdered drugs or takes pills that were not given to them by a pharmacy should assume they contain fentanyl. Drugs purchased online, from friends, or from regular dealers could be deadly.” In 2022, 60 percent of fentanyl-laced prescription pills analyzed by the Drug Enforcement Agency were found to contain potentially lethal doses.
All of that makes the scourge particularly insidious — and particularly difficult to stem, requiring a focus on both supply and demand. The governments of China and Mexico must be enlisted to slow the manufacturing and trafficking of the drug; education and treatment programs must be bolstered in this country to diminish the market for those illicit drug manufacturers.
During the roundtable with Cantwell, Vancouver Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle focused on the conditions that contribute to addiction. “If we can bridge this immediate crisis of housing and services, you will give these individuals the help that they need,” she said.
That is an important step, and it is within the purview of local government. But slowing the fentanyl crisis will require efforts at all levels of government.
