‘Never Seen Anything Like This Before’: New Factor Blamed for Fentanyl Deaths

Although the huge number of drug overdose deaths in America saw its first slight decrease last year, fentanyl remains largely responsible for “poisoning” America, especially its young people. Indeed, for Americans age 18-45, fentanyl overdose remains the leading cause of death – thanks, experts say, to Mexican cartels, an open border … and social media.

Reported by the National Center for Health Statistics as the first annual decrease since 2018, drug overdose deaths in the United States reached 107,543 in 2023. This amounts to a 3% reduction from the number of deaths reported in 2022. However, in both years, nearly 69% of the deaths were attributed to the presence of synthetic opioids – primarily fentanyl.

WND spoke to Keith Talamo, chief medicolegal death investigator at the Lafayette Parish Coroner’s Office in Lafayette, Louisiana, who said fentanyl deaths have also been on the rise each year in Lafayette Parish with the exception of 2023. In 2015, he said, there were no overdose deaths associated with fentanyl. Eight years later, 66 of 108 deaths involved fentanyl.

Having worked as an investigator since November 1999, Talamo told WND, “We’ve never seen anything like this before,” and considering the steady rise in deaths attributed to fentanyl, he added, “I don’t see an end in sight.” He explained that fentanyl is very inexpensive to produce, adding that “it takes very little to get addicted and very little to kill you.” According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, two milligrams of fentanyl is considered a potentially lethal dose.

Adding an additional and extremely perverse dimension to what is already an unprecedented drug-death epidemic, Talamo shared that fake pills containing deadly amounts of fentanyl are increasingly prevalent today. (Read more from “‘Never Seen Anything Like This Before’: New Factor Blamed for Fentanyl Deaths” HERE)