T ads target ‘manufactured death’
Top lawmen liken opioids to WMD
With 2,100 Bay State lives lost to overdoses last year, the fevered opioid crisis has emerged as a virtual weapon of mass destruction, the New England head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said yesterday at the launch of a multi-agency campaign to guide illicit drug users off the path to self-destruction.
“I can tell you that in my almost 28 years as a special agent with DEA, this is the worst public health and safety epidemic I have ever witnessed,” said Special Agent-in-Charge Michael J. Ferguson.
“And what has changed the epidemic for the worse is the introduction of fentanyl. Fentanyl and its related synthetic opioids are manufactured death, plain and simple. It’s killing our friends, loved ones, coworkers and fellow New Englanders at an alarming rate.
“The majority of these deaths involve heroin laced with fentanyl or just fentanyl,” Ferguson said. “I’ve often said on many occasions that if anything can be likened to a weapon of mass destruction and what it does to a community, it’s fentanyl.”
Acting U.S. Attorney William D. Weinreb said his office has put up $60,000 to spread the “Resist the Risk” call to action online, in New Bedford, Fall River, Attleboro and Taunton via placards on MBTA buses, on Red and Orange line trains and, soon, social media platforms. The messages, sometimes grim, cut to the chase: One features a cemetery and the warning, “Keep your name off the next headstone.”
“We hope this campaign will help people make the right choices, that it will help them resist the risk of abusing, selling and sharing prescription painkillers and illegal drugs,” Weinreb said at a press conference outside U.S. District Court in South Boston.
“People have begun treating illegal opioid use as safe and normal,” he added. “They’re losing sight of the fact that it’s illegal and potentially deadly.”
Weinreb noted that more than two-thirds of the fatal ODs in Massachusetts last year involved fentanyl. But even as law enforcement has cast a more compassionate eye toward treating the “disease” of drug addiction, it has not lost sight of dealing with what is still criminal behavior, he said.
“We are focused, with a great deal of our resources, on stopping the trafficking of illegal drugs at every level,” the veteran prosecutor said.
“In conjunction with state prosecutors and local law enforcement, we are trying to stop the chain of distribution from the very top, all the way down to the very bottom. I wouldn’t say we’ve slacked on that at all. We are attacking the problem from all levels and all directions.”
Transit Police Chief Kenneth Green echoed that point, saying, “History has taught us that we cannot arrest our way out of the scourge. But by working collaboratively in humanizing those afflicted with drug addiction, we can help save lives and prevent further harm.”