Law enforcement officials and a mother who lost her son warned about the dangers of fentanyl during an awareness program held at Byers Theatre in Sandy Springs on Thursday night.
Dan Salter, retired DEA special agent in charge and current director of the Atlanta-Carolinas High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, opened the program by sharing statistics that showed how prevalent fentanyl has become.
He said the CDC determined that fentanyl was the leading cause of death for people ages 18-45 and in 2022 more than 109,000 died from overdoses. DEA lab testing has shown that 7 out of every 10 pills with fentanyl contain a potentially lethal dose.
From 2019 through 2021, the number of drug overdose deaths by fentanyl among adolescents ages 10 to 19 years has risen 800 percent in Georgia, Salter said.
He said he’s a big advocate of people having Narcan handy, as an overdose can happen anywhere. The nasal spray can quickly reverse the potentially fatal effects of an opioid overdose.
But even as drug cartels are cutting other drugs with the cheaper-to-produce fentanyl and making fake pills almost impossible to tell apart from actual prescription drugs, they’ve introduced another drug. The DEA said Xylazine, a powerful sedative that has been approved for veterinary use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is being mixed with fentanyl. Xylazine is not an opioid, so Narcan doesn’t work to reverse it.
The number of overdose deaths involving Xylazine in Georgia from 2020-2023 increased by 1,120 percent, with 183 reported deaths in 2022.
Angela King shared the story of losing her college-aged son, Jack, to a fentanyl overdose on Thanksgiving. He was not someone who took drugs, she said. On the night before Thanksgiving, she and her husband, Mike, knew their other kids were at home in bed and Jack was at a friend’s place around the corner. They went to sleep anticipating a family Thanksgiving.
On Thanksgiving Day, Mike started calling his son, but Jack didn’t answer his phone. So his dad went to that friend’s house. When he got there, they were all still asleep and Mike tried to wake his son up.
“But Jack didn’t wake up. His nails were blue, and he was already gone,” his mother said.
King said Jack will have no more birthdays, no more Thanksgivings, no more Christmases, no more beach trips, no more spending time with family, no graduating from college or getting married.
“Saying ‘don’t do drugs’ isn’t working,” King said, adding that kids were playing Russian roulette when they go to parties and take pills.
She promised she would be talking with legislators to get laws passed and would speak to anyone or group that would have her as a guest.
“I hope that I’ve reached just one person tonight, saving one life. If I’ve done that, then I’m doing what’s right for Jack in honor of him,” King said.
Salter said fentanyl doesn’t discriminate.
“I don’t care where you live or sit politically. It’s killing people indiscriminately,” he said.
Ryan K. Buchanan, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, said he and his staff with law enforcement’s help work to keep the people in the district’s 46 counties safe by prosecuting drug traffickers and cartels.
Buchanan said fentanyl could now be found in every part of Georiga, so no one was safe from its effects.
Audience members asked questions about marijuana laced with fentanyl. Salter said some believe the burning will break down the fentanyl and remove its toxicity. He’s not convinced that’s true. However, he does hear that vaping marijuana does not eliminate the dangers of fentanyl.