MORGANTOWN, W.Va. Those on the front lines of the battle against fentanyl compared notes and learned the latest about the battle during a one-day symposium Thursday in Morgantown.
According to Victor Brown, director of the Appalachia High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA), his unit receives special funding from the federal government due to the volume of drug activity. Brown manages 38 task units in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia and expressed shock that the fentanyl problem isn’t taken more seriously.
“There’s very little mention in the media unless it’s a high profile individual,” Brown said. “There’s no public outcry, it needs to be alarming to this nation that we’re losing 100,000 individuals a year to drug overdoses- something has to be done.”
Ray Donovan, Federal DEA Chief of Operations, will be making a presentation at a fentanyl symposium in Morgantown today. What points does Ray want to get across today? He joins @HoppyKercheval. WATCH: https://t.co/yCFQ3nDJuy pic.twitter.com/5Q2lqyXiec
— MetroNews (@WVMetroNews) March 24, 2022
Over the last two years, the battle against fentanyl was hampered because of the pandemic but most recently the record flow of fentanyl over the southwest border made the job of law enforcement much more difficult and dangerous, Brown said.
“Drugs are flowing in the southwest border at record numbers and alarming rates,” Brown said. “We can investigate the individuals selling drugs all day long, but if the supply was curtailed at the border it would help law enforcement and the nation tremendously.”
U. S. Attorney for the Northern District of West Virginia Bill Ihlenfeld said smugglers and dealers becoming more sophisticated. Drugs are still smuggled by car or truck, but the use of commercial delivery services is becoming the method of choice.
“Sometimes these parcels and packages are being sent to hotels, motels or Airbnb and someone is being sent to go pick them up,” Ihlenfeld said.
Many of the overdose deaths are purely accidental. Many times fentanyl is not properly diluted and sold as another substance or in other cases drug dealers have access to professional equipment to can produce very convincing fakes.
“The counterfeits look better than the real pills,” Ihlenfeld said. “So, someone actually things they’re getting 30 milligrams of Oxycodone when in face it contains an amount of fentanyl that could potentially be fatal.”
The drug networks are well-known to the task force, but they are able to blend in larger cities while recruiting people to sell the drugs in areas where demand is high. Usually traffickers will become friends with a user and sell from that location until they feel it’s no longer safe and flee. The dealer typically gives the user free drugs for the use of the property.
“Both major cartels have a major presence in Chicago. Chicago feeds Detroit, Detroit feeds West Virginia.”