Now that the opioid is the leading cause of death for U.S. adults 18-49, Eyewitness News goes inside the one resource aimed at pushing back the camouflaged threat.
Fentanyl is now the deadliest drug on Houston's streets. ABC13 anchor Chauncy Glover gives us a rare look inside the DEA's operation to fight the crisis.Scroggins says her daughter Allison was in the prime of her life and studying to be a paralegal. But she says on March 18, 2020, while partying with friends for St. Patrick's Day, her daughter took what she thought was oxycodone. Allison Scroggins went to sleep and never woke up.
"So the chemists are opening their evidence here and performing various instrumental tests to determine what exactly the evidence can contain, and then they issue reports that then go to court," Jamie Vazquez, the lab director, said."The predominant drug that we see is methamphetamine, followed by cocaine, and then fentanyl, and then heroin.
"Young people are supposed to learn from their mistakes, not die from their mistakes," Scroggins said.According to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Science, deaths involving fentanyl in Harris County from 2019 to 2021 rose from 104 to 459, a roughly 340% increase. The DEA says four out of every 10 pills on the streets of Houston right now is laced with a deadly amount of fentanyl, and agents are worried it's going to get worse.
Back at the DEA lab, the staff here changed the priority of seizures because of so many deaths. Fentanyl cases now go right to the top.
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