ATLANTA — There’s a new deadly concern when it comes to opioids. The deadly concoction of an animal tranquilizer mixed in with street drugs is killing Georgians by the dozens.
Channel 2 Action News has been dedicated to covering the opioid epidemic by warning families and exposing challenges that make these drugs prevalent in local neighborhoods.
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Channel 2 Action News first introduced viewers to an emerging threat of legit-looking pills laced with fentanyl then sold online back in 2019.
“Dealers and people who are putting deadly fentanyl into pill presses, they making these pills look like their real counterparts,” said Dr. Gaylord Lopez with the Georgia Poison Center.
Health officials said fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin. To put it another way, take a pill the size of a baby aspirin.
“If you divide that pill into over 300 pieces, one of those pieces can kill you,” Dr. Gaylord said.
Illicit fentanyl gets pressed into pills made to look like prescription opioids. Channel 2′s Tom Regan checked online and found many places that sell pill presses and ordered one.
It came a couple of days later and even included a thank you note.
The DEA told Channel 2 Action News local drug dealers are using pressing devices to crank out homemade counterfeit pills.
Officials believe the drug dealers order the key ingredient, powered fentanyl on the dark web from China labs.
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The Georgia State Patrol pulled over a pickup truck in Bartow County in 2016.
When the Bartow Cartersville drug task force showed up they discovered 40 kilos of fentanyl hidden in buckets.
“You got a whole bunch of folks like at UGA’s Sanford Stadium could be killed by that,” said Sgt. Charles Chapeau with the Georgia State Patrol. “Where we used to see it mixed and laced. Now we’re just seeing straight Fentanyl coming.”
GSP and other local law enforcement agencies work with southern border authorities to stop the flow of traffickers.
This is something Channel 2′s Investigative Reporter Mark Winne and the DEA showed viewers firsthand.
Cartels based in Mexico controlling the drug trade throughout Georgia.
A veteran undercover agent told Winne he has worked hundreds of cartel investigations.
“It would be very rare working a cartel investigation where there were no guns,” Chuvalo said. “These are a variety of weapons seized from current and active DEA investigations. The vast majority of DEA’s investigations here in Atlanta involve Mexican cartels.”
Just last year, NewsChopper 2 flew with the DEA over metro Atlanta.
The head of the agency told us he’s been fighting drugs for 25 years and this is the worst he’s ever seen it.
Special Agent in Charge Robert Murphy said cartels hide in plain sight, and “act like good neighbors besides the fact they’re making poison.”
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