What fentanyl is and why it’s so deadly.
It was created as a prescribed painkiller with a potency estimated at 80 to 100 times that of morphine.
Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, often appears as a small, blue pill with the number “30” and the letter “M” etched into its side. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration has found 26 percent of tablets tested for the drug contain a lethal dose of 2 milligrams or more.
Cheap, potent and highly addictive, fentanyl is now a draw for drug dealers, who cut costs and increase profits by mixing it with illegal narcotics, such as heroin, or selling it on its own.
The majority of fentanyl comes from China, according to a 2020 report from the DEA, and is shipped as a powder to the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It is cut with other drugs and diluted in Mexico, and often smuggled into the U.S. for illicit use, the report said.
The New Mexico Department of Health has reported overdose deaths involving fentanyl and similar synthetic opioids are increasing rapidly.
In 2016, the state saw 45 fentanyl-involved overdose deaths. The number gradually increased to 129 deaths in 2019 and over 300 in 2020, provisional data shows.
The drug initially gained popularity on the East Coast, but New Mexico State Police Lt. Scott McFaul, who heads the Region 3 Drug Task Force, said it has slowly made its way to the South and Southwest in recent years.
Social media has helped accelerate its spread.
“The people that are using social media platforms and seeking these drugs laced with fentanyl, it’s obvious they have zero regard for anyone else’s lives,” he said. “It gets frustrating when we see this happening in our own backyard.”
The New Mexico Department of Health said the first confirmed fentanyl-involved overdose deaths were recorded in 2016 and then spiked in 2019. Santa Fe health care providers affirmed this, saying the first time they saw the drug appear on test strips was around the fall of 2019.
Phillip Fiuty, harm reduction program manager at The Mountain Center, said the first wave of fentanyl the organization saw was on the heels of a 2019 drug bust conducted by the DEA and FBI in Española.
“This is one of the last places it showed up. We’re pretty new to it,” he said. “In the intervening months between when the bust took place to when the fentanyl showed up, it was kind of a free for all in terms of drug supply.”
For longtime opioid users, the drug may not be as deadly as it is for new users and young people. It can be smoked, swallowed, snorted or injected. Santa Fe emergency responders say they have seen overdoses in people of all ages.
“The patients that we encounter in the field have [pinpoint] pupils, they have slow respiration, all of the things that are indicative of opioid ingestion,” Santa Fe Fire Department Medical Officer Michael Suber said. “Those are usually indications that it’s either heroin or some synthetic opioid, which is certainly fentanyl.”
Overdosing on fentanyl can result in a decrease of oxygen to the brain, known as hypoxia, which can lead to a coma or brain damage, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
“The big issue here with that drug being black market is that there’s no way to know exactly how much you’re taking. The propensity toward overdose is so common,” said Brendan Schafer, a paramedic with the Santa Fe Fire Department.
I don’t want anything to do with drugs anymore, just because of that experience [an overdose]. I don’t want to touch any drugs.” A 16-year-old Santa Fe boy whose use of fentanyl sent him to the hospital