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Fentanyl

Fentanyl continues to fuel the most lethal opioid epidemic the U.S. has ever experienced. Drug Strategies identified this threat early on and worked closely with U.S. and foreign authorities to devise effective strategies to reduce its impact.

More Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2018 than from traffic accidents or guns. According to the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two-thirds of the almost 47,000 opioid-related deaths that year were caused by powerful synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl and its analogs.

Sold through illegal drug markets across the U.S., fentanyl is often substituted as a cheaper, if far more dangerous, alternative to heroin and other opioids, like Vicodin and Oxycontin. Fentanyl is also mixed—with or without the user’s knowledge—with street cocaine and other drugs.

Drug Strategies convened numerous meetings in 2018 to identify promising strategies to address the fentanyl crisis. Philip Heymann, Chair of the Drug Strategies Board of Directors, and former U.S. Deputy Attorney General, along with Mathea Falco, President of Drug Strategies, brought together top officials from the U.S. Postal Service, the Department of Justice, FBI, Customs, DEA, FDA, as well as experts from Yale and Harvard Law Schools.

After extensive discussions, participants concurred that while federal enforcement and interdiction efforts remain critically important, initiatives at the state level can have an immediate impact on reducing fentanyl overdose deaths.

In order to increase public awareness of both the scope of the problem and concrete steps that states have taken to reduce this death toll, Drug Strategies, in collaboration with Shatterproof, developed a report focused on those states that have been most seriously affected. The report, “The Fentanyl Epidemic: State Initiatives to Reduce Overdose Deaths,” offers seven recommendations that encourage states to take effective action.