Jackson County Drug Task Force Seizes 3,000 Pills Laced With Deadly Synthetic Opioid

Just a speck of fentanyl can kill you. 

For most people a single two milligram—0.00007 ounce—dose would likely be lethal, according to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. The synthetic opioid causes thousands of deaths in America every year.

That’s why the Jackson County Drug Task Force's seizure of 3,000 pills laced with fentanyl late this summer almost certainly saved lives—and also sounded alarms.

'As Deadly As A Cyanide Capsule'

“We initially thought they were OxyContin,” says Drug Task Force Officer-In-Charge Dan Cummings. “They looked like oxy. They were stamped like oxy pills. Turns out there was a heavy concentration of fentanyl in these tablets. That’s terrifying.”

COMBAT Director Vince Ortega puts the peril in stark terms: “Any tablet with a heavy enough concentration of fentanyl in it—and it doesn’t take much—could be every bit as deadly as biting down on a cyanide capsule.”