FARGO (KFGO) – Last week, the Drug Enforcement Administration reported that fentanyl had overtaken methamphetamine as the number one drug threat in North Dakota in 2022, with federal agents seizing enough lethal doses in the state last year to kill 36,000 people.
Police and public health officials in Fargo said the rise of fentanyl has been jarring.
“Fentanyl coming into town and taking the stronghold that it did – kind of took a lot of people by surprise. In North Dakota, typically it’s meth and alcohol – and now for a completely different substance with a completely different feel to come in and just get its grips on folks – it’s scary,” said Jordan Beyer, a harm reduction specialist with Fargo Cass Public Health.
In August, Fargo Police sounded the alarm after four young people died of fatal fentanyl overdoses in one weekend. Lt. Mike Bernier said investigations into fatal overdoses take time, and efforts to stem the tide of fentanyl into the community are ongoing.
“In a typical case – if there’s an overdose or an overdose death – we monitor those things to see if we can’t form some sort of link to where these drugs are coming from or who sold the drugs. It doesn’t come very quickly – if there’s ties between certain cases, we might have to put that particular case on hold while we’re investigating a larger entity that’s coming into the city,” he said.
In the meantime, Bernier said, the public needs to be educated on the dangers of fentanyl.
“Some of these pills will come in looking like candy – and they’re made to look like OxyContin, or Zanax, or Adderall. One of these pills can kill a person,” he said. “I encourage people to talk to their children, and make sure they’re not taking any drugs from a friend – or any pills, unless they absolutely know it’s from a prescription, from a doctor,” he said.
Beyer said fentanyl is now laced into nearly every street drug, and counterfeit prescription pills are leading to many of the fatal overdoses. He said while the city’s Harm Reduction Center downtown has critical tools for combatting its lethal impact, not everyone who should be is utilizing them.
“It’s people not knowing what they’re getting into – thinking they can buy a painkiller off their buddy if they’re not feeling well and it’s going to be what they were told it is, and it’s not,” he said. “A lot of the 20-, 22-year-olds who are overdosing – I don’t see them ever. They’re not coming in to have to have these conversations and find out, ‘if I am going to use this product, there’s a place that can give me fentanyl testing strips and Narcan to make sure that I can at least try and stay safer.’”
Beyer said testing strips and naloxone are free and confidentially available to the public at the Harm Reduction Center at 510 5th Street N. in Fargo.
Bernier said every economic and social class in Fargo has been impacted by fentanyl.
“It’s anybody and everybody. There’s no race, there’s no age we can just point our fingers to. There’s no one driving force or group of individuals we can just put our focus on, because it hits everybody equally,” he said.
Bernier said while the DEA works to combat the cartels importing the vast majority of the fentanyl into the U.S., he’s focused on keeping the Fargo community safe, particularly kids.
“It’s one thing for an adult to make their adult decision, but it’s another thing for one of these pills to find its way into a child’s hand. That’s what keeps me up at night – it’s a synthetic opioid being crushed into pills and sold by cartels out of Mexico,” he said. “It’s scary, and it’s killing people. And they don’t care.”
The Cass County coroner said there were 36 fentanyl-related deaths in 2022, an increase of three deaths from the 33 people who lost their lives to fentanyl in 2021.