The border patrol at Port of Nogales in Arizona found over 500,000 fentanyl pills on Saturday and Sunday.
There is a reason why people on the street call Arizona “Fentazona.” I’ll explain later.
Port Director Michael Humphries listed the confiscation on Twitter:
Saturday:
Sunday:
We talk a lot about Texas and the border crisis but I see a lot of the fentanyl stories are in Arizona.
The Arizona Republic‘s feature “Fentazona” in September analyzed fentanyl’s usage in the “increase in opioid overdose deaths” in the state:
Jennifer Govan, clinical director for the Scottsdale Recovery Center, which has inpatient and outpatient treatment for opioid use disorder in adults, said nearly all the patients her center is seeing are primarily struggling with fentanyl.”For us to see anything but fentanyl is extremely rare,” she said. “Once or twice a month we might see someone still using heroin.”And fentanyl comes in a powder form that illegal drug manufacturers can put into anything, not just pills.Some patients will say they aren’t using fentanyl, not realizing that it’s been added to the methamphetamine or cocaine or whatever it is that they have been taking, Govan said.”It’s being added to everything, hence the increase in addiction. … It is extremely addictive,” she said. “They don’t necessarily know they are getting fentanyl in their methamphetamine or MDA (methylenedioxyamphetamine) or whatever it might be, but they are.”
It turns out that “Arizona is one of the cheapest places in the country for buying pills containing fentanyl.”
“‘Fentazona,’ that is what they are calling Arizona on the streets,” said John Koch, director of community engagement for Community Medical Services.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY