You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
FENTANYL – THE NEW NORMAL
Welcome to The Fentanyl Epidemic.
A grain of Fentanyl inhaled or even absorbed through the skin can incapacitate or kill.
According to the DEA: Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 80-100 times stronger than morphine.
Just think about that.
A single dose or 2 of Morphine is what they gave soldiers in war to stop the pain in bloody combat. And a few grains of fentanyl is possibly 100 times more powerful than morphine.
Wow.
That’s the difference between firing a shotgun versus firing a bazooka.
So what is Fentanyl? Fentanyl is a drug that is commonly used in surgical settings as an anesthetic.
It’s a toxic, lethal substance that is highly regulated by the DEA.
Handling this lethal element is a chemical high wire act. Only trained experts should come into contact with this substance. It’s like juggling nitro glycerin with a flame flower.
If you do come into contact with Fentanyl, you need to wear protective garb. You need a body condom with a reservoir tip. You need to wear masks and respirators and thick rubber pants and boots capable of withstanding the harshness of a Chernobyl winter.
Heroin cut with Fentanyl is now a toxic component that Cartels are pushing over our borders from Mexico and China.
Street names range from Dope to Smack, to H, to Junk to Skag to Horse to China White.
Why is fentanyl in heroin?
Because it intensifies the high. Like heroin by itself isn’t enough.
Adding Fentanyl to heroin is like adding a nitros-oxide switch to a muscle car with 500 horse power. It’s excessive, unnecessary and highly intoxicating.
It’s somethig that pushes your head into the back of your seat.
But with Fentanyl, it’s your brain pushing into the back of your skull. It’s the blood rushing through your heart like a broken levy. It’s your lungs freezing up and air stagnating in your alveoli waiting for your autonomous nervous system to work.
Apparently the rush of mind altering Heroin isn’t enough for the new millennium junkie. Addicts now roll the dice by ingesting tainted narcotics loaded with a substance equivalent to nuclear particles on speed.
When snorted or injected, fentanyl takes effect almost instantly.
Once fentanyl enters your body, all bets are off.
It’s like jet fuel added to a lawn mower.
Fentanyl is a death sentence. It’s a car loaded with TNT going over a cliff with few options for a safe return.
Many junkies die with the needle still plunged into their vein.
I’ve seen video of modern day overdose victims. They are limp rag dolls of unconscious phlegm.
They are bobble heads of gurgling swill.
People who snort heroin laced with fentanyl are gambling that they won’t die.
That’s crazy.
Where it use to be a drug only pharmacists and surgeons knew about, now, it’s routinely showing up in parking lots and living rooms around the country.
1st responders are now the front line on the fentanyl invasion that is killing our society one family member at a time.
Anyone who advocates open borders has never rolled with the men and women battling the opiod epidemic one traffic stop at a time.
Drugs pour into Tennessee from other countries.
Mexico is a direct drug pipeline into the USA.
The drug shipments enter through Texas and California.
The toxic payloads are hidden in secret compartments in tanker trucks or hollowed out compartments under SUVs.
The drug mules drive to little town USA on interstates 10, 40, 65.
Some shipments are intercepted.
Most drugs arrive and go exactly where they are intended to go.
The toxic brew is parceled out to dope fiends in big cities and ultimately disseminated into bucolic country bumpkin nowhere.
While law makers debate the morality of a border wall and the meaning of the words on the Statue of Liberty, Drug King Pins are pushing billions of dollars of fentanyl laced heroin and crystal meth into our country.
The border is so porous, it’s the equivalent of trying to contain water being poured into a jug with no bottom.
Every day, we reporters look for news of the day. And every day we find stories about the brave men and women; the paramedics, and deputies and cops who answer the call when someone is in distress.
And we air this effort, on the 6 O’clock news sometimes in all of its ugly, gruesome detail.
Heroin is dangerous. It can kill.
Doing heroin tainted with fentanyl is the equivalent of putting 5 bullets into a six shooter, holding the gun to your temple and pulling the trigger.
Like a single bullet in that 6 shooter, heroin laced with fentanyl can snuff out your life in a single moment.
“Quit making our county look so bad.”
That’s the message I received from some woman on Facebook the other day.
It came after my report on a man who snorted heroin probably laced with fentanyl.
Her note irritated me. I deleted it. I’ve learned not to respond over my decades in this business.
Attack the messenger is a real thing. She doesn’t blame the porous border where cartels push death into the country. She doesn’t attack the addict, breaking the law snorting the illegal drug. She doesn’t hold accountable the cops for giving me the body cam of the footage to get the message out. No, instead she writes me, chastising me, telling me that I need to stop telling the truth.
Why? Because the truth is ugly.
It’s easier to put your head in the sand and forget the problem is killing your neighbor.
The video I obtain from the police is tough to watch.
It shows the heroic officer racing to the scene. The camera is positioned on his uniform, as he drives to the call. The sound of sirens and his police scanner fill the void. Blasts of neon color from traffic lights splash across his windshield as he races in the dead of night to another overdose call in a public parking lot in a small county.
The cop arrives. He jumps out of the car and races to a pick up truck.
The man in the passenger seat is slumped over. He is unconscious, and barely breathing.
His buddy is outside the truck, clinging to the window. He called 911 when his friend passed out. He will later tell the officer he slapped his unconscious friend and threw his coke on him to awaken him. When that didn’t work, he called for help.
The cop’s body cam shows the amazing moment as the officer pulls Narcan from his medical kit, and applies one blast into the unconscious man’s nostril.
The man looks like a rag doll. His head flops around. He is either dead or unconscious with practically no life signs.
“He ain’t breathing,” you can hear the officer say while huffing and puffing.
The unconscious man’s friend yells, “I didn’t know what to do. I ain’t never seen anything like this.”
The cop has sadly done this many times. It’s becoming a nightly occurrence in this tiny town where heroin tainted fentanyl is the new reality.
By this time the medical units arrive.
As they begin to assess the situation, the patient gurgles, and suddenly inhales a gulp of air.
And like that another cop armed with life saving Narcan, brings another young American back from the abyss.
The medical team pulls the victim from the cab of the truck and lays his limp body on the stretcher.
Another save for the good guys.
Another near death due to addiction laced with fentanyl.
I show this story. It is gritty and visceral.
The body cam is clear. The lighting is excellent, considering it happens at night. The sounds are clear.
It’s mano a mano, up close and personal as the officer works to save this man who is a rag doll teetering on the doorstep of the beyond.
It’s hard to watch. It’s so real. It’s much more than words on a police report, stats on a spread sheet.
This is a 25-year-old. He is teetering on the cusp of death. He is someone’s son. He is someone’s loved one.
An anonymous cop saves another anonymous life and I show every grizzly detail.
The victim will be rushed to the hospital. He will be checked out and released.
His charge? Possession of drug paraphernalia.
That charge will not change his desire to do it again.
The need, the addiction, the magnetic attraction to the chemical devil will summon him again sooner or later.
He will snort or inject heroin. It either will or will not have fentanyl. He either will or will not die.
Perhaps he will have a friend ready to call 911 and save his life. Perhaps not.
That’s the Russian Roulette moment of this new world order.
The problem is immense. It begins at the border, porous and defenseless to stop the flow of death. It travels up and down our interstates into little towns and big cities. It shoots into veins in public parking lots. It is snorted in sleezy motel rooms on the wrong side of town.
It’s a poisonous merry go round never ending.
Perhaps my willingness to show the visceral interaction between cop and junkie and death is too much for some viewers. It is hard to watch. It’s a gut punch. It’s hardcore. It’s a newscast of life being pulled from the jaws of death.
Kill the messenger. Don’t make our county look so bad.
OK, lady. I’ll stop showing this video when you do something to keep fentanyl from entering our country.
Life’s Crazy™