Law enforcement warns that a new and even more dangerous type of fentanyl has reached Alabama as the crisis spreads. The narcotic Task Force Investigators reported finding para-fluorofentanyl—a more potent narcotic than pure fentanyl—during a drug bust in Shelby County.
According to Virginia Guy, executive director of the Drug Education Council, this epidemic has an impact on everyone.
“Fentanyl is about 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine,” Guy stated. “This new strain of fentanyl is even more powerful than fentanyl. So, it’s just so deadly and so dangerous for all of us really.”
“It’s so easy to come in contact with it if you’re around it,” Guy stated. “You can accidentally inhale it you can touch it. It’s putting all of us at risk. It’s putting families at risk. If you’ve got somebody in your family that’s using fentanyl and they come into your home, it’s putting your family at risk. It’s putting our health care professionals at risk and even our service industry at risk.”
“Often times, taking knowingly, but sometimes it’s being laced into other narcotics,” Barber stated. “It can be put into heroin, it can be put into THC, vapes. It can be put into marijuana to try and enhance it. That’s what we’re seeing is a combination of some people intentionally trying to take it and others are just being given it thinking they were doing some other narcotics.”
Guy stated that the Gulf Coast region might be a major hub for the trafficking of this lethal substance.
“With us in Mobile, we are right at the intersection of I-10 and I-65 both of those are considered drug corridors,” she stated. “We need to be very careful, and our law-enforcement definitely needs to be very careful because they could just do a routine traffic stop and come in contact with this stuff. It is just so deadly.”
