Fentanyl laced pills are the new scourge of the American West. In a detailed investigation by National Public Radio, Chelsea Shover, an epidemiologist at Stanford University, explains, “Up through 2018, the vast majority of synthetic opioid overdoses occurred east of the Mississippi River.”

Then, beginning at the close of 2018 and continuing to this very day, the fentanyl breakthrough into the American West began. When tested by drug labs and police departments, a variety of illegal drugs turned out to be fentanyl laced.

Describing what happens to the unknowing American partygoer out for a good time, Shover says, “You think you’re using heroin, or you think you’re using Ecstasy or Xanax or what looks like an Oxycontin pill, but it’s actually fentanyl.”

The surge across the American West of fentanyl laced drugs, most of them manufactured by the Mexican drug cartels,led directly to a record number of fatal overdoses in 2019. It is hard to imagine, but over 72,000 Americans died from such overdoses, and the number one cause was fentanyl.

Beyond partygoers at clubs or underground raves taking fentanyl-laced pills like Ecstasy or Molly, an even darker trend has erupted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The most requested drugs from doctors during the pandemic are benzodiazepine tranquilizers like Xanax and Valium. Indeed, tranquilizers are more popular today than ever before, and fentanyl laced tranquilizers are becoming all too common.

FentanylLaced Pills = Mother’s New Little Helper

Described by The Rolling Stones as ‘Mother’s Little Helper,’ these tranquilizers have a history of calming the frayed nerves of many people, particularly older women, understandably rattled by the most severe health crisis in their lifetimes. Not seeing patients regularly during the pandemic, however, doctors are not willing to give extended prescriptions for Class I tranquilizers. Indeed, even the pleading of desperate patients is ignored when medical licenses could be at risk.

Thus, mom or grandma asks if their children or grandchildren can help them out. Black market Xanax tablets and pills, known as Bars or Xannies, are readily available from drug dealers across the country. You can buy them at clubs from bouncers or at bars from bartenders as they try to make a little money on the side.

Even in quarantine, drug dealers are doing a bonanza when it comes to selling black-market pills out of their cars in the parking lots of local pharmacies. The horrific reality is that majority of blackmarket pills are not what they claim to be. Indeed, the active ingredient in more than 50 percent of these drugs is fentanyl.

Fentanyl Laced Pills Equal Accidental Overdose

Given the contamination of fentanyl laced pills, how many innocent American people, overcome by anxiety and fear, desperate for a little help, have become addicted to opioids unwittingly because they made a poor choice and Xanax or Valium on the black market?

Consider the consequences: How many have overdosed because the Mexican cartels screwed up the almost microscopic doses of the ultra-powerful opioid in fentanyl laced pills? How many people have we lost in this fentanyl-laced storm of outright deception and false advertising in the drug world?

Indeed, the danger is all too real. Professionals in the treatment field need to raise the alarm. The threat from fentanyl laced pills produced by Mexican drug cartels is too great to continue to ignore.