EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) – According to Kyle Williamson, the former Special Agent in charge for the El Paso Drug Enforcement Agency, the demand for Opioids in the United States is alarmingly high and overdose deaths from those drugs are once again on the rise.
One of the biggest reasons, Williamson said, is because of the massive increase of Fentanyl coming across the southern border.
“Our fentanyl seizures are up over 524% and our Methamphetamine seizures are up over 200%”
Williamson said that the amounts of both Fentanyl and methamphetamine that are being confiscated is unprecedented and he feels people need to be made aware of just how deadly fentanyl can be.
“People need to be educated,” he said, “People need to know that two out of every five fentanyl pills that we are seizing are a lethal dose.”
According to the DEA, in the period ending in January of 2021 there were more than 94,000 overdose deaths in this country.
Williamson said some people become victims of a drug that they don’t even know they’re taking because it’s disguised as something else,
“Especially with the appeal of the counterfeit Fentanyl pills because they look like prescription pills, they look like your normal Oxycodone prescribed by your doctor, purchased in your pharmacy but in reality they are manufactured in Mexico.”
Williamson asserted that more of those types of pills are staying in El Paso and that it is very easy for anyone who wants the drugs to get a hold of them,
‘They are distributed through social media, they’re on the streets, they’re in the schools, they’re everywhere.”
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