Fentanyl Seized in Manitowoc County in 2020
The head of the Manitowoc County Drug Unit said he and his investigators are seeing an increasing presence of fentanyl in local drug cases.
Lieutenant Dave Remiker spoke about the depth of the problem and how it has worsened in recent months.
“That has been found in a lot of our meth, and we’ve had a few cases now where we are seeing the presence of fentanyl in marijuana,” he told Seehafer News. “We have heard about the synthetic fentanyl that will be mass-produced and brought into the country. It originates in China and gets into our country through the borders.”
Lt. Remiker explains the fentanyl cases are almost all related to overdose deaths.
“People that I know in the community that have been working on recovery and their addiction for a long time, sad to say, there have been a few who have passed away from overdose-related use. That’s hard,” he said. “I still try to be involved in the recovery community as much as I can, so those are tough cases and calls.”
Interestingly enough, Remiker says they’re starting to see at a lot of their search warrants that drug users are able to obtain fentanyl test kits, so people doing heroin and meth are able to determine if the powerful synthetic opioid analgesic is in their drugs.
Meanwhile, Congressman Glen Grothman’s bill known as the Fentanyl Penalties Parity Act has garnered a lot of support.
This bill looks to lower the amount of fentanyl an individual needs to be in possession of in order to be charged with a federal crime.
18 legislators have signed on as cosponsors of the bill, including Wisconsin Congressmen Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald.
In a news release, Grothman cited the fact that 11,201 pounds of the drug were seized by border protection between October of last year and this past September.
That equates to roughly 2.8 billion lethal doses of fentanyl.
