The Drug Enforcement Agency is putting out an urgent public health warning about carfentanil, a synthetic opioid that has now been linked to two recent deadly overdoses in Connecticut.
"Any fentanyl related compound, like carfentanil, can be a liken to a weapon of mass destruction," said Michael Ferguson, the Special Agent in Charge of the New England DEA Field Division, in an exclusive interview with NBC Connecticut in New Haven.
The synthetic substance is an animal tranquilizer that is 100 times more potent than fentanyl, Ferguson said.
"It can kill you if you inject in your arm, breath it in the air, or touch it with your skin," Ferguson explained. He added that DEA agents, EMTs and police officers need to take precautions when exposed to any substance that could have a synthetic opioid in it.
During the ongoing epidemic that is killing 90 people a day nationwide, dealers are now mixing the dangerous synthetic opioids with heroin and other drugs.
"You really don’t know what you’re ingesting when you buy these things," U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut Deirdre Daly said.
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In June of 2016, 17 people overdosed in New Haven within 24 hours. Three people lost their lives.
"They thought they were just taking cocaine," Daly said. "But there was fentanyl in that cocaine and now we’re seeing carfentanil in addition to the fentanyl."
Earlier this month, Daly’s office announced the first arrest of a man charged with distributing carfentanil in Connecticut.
"This was an arrest with the DEA and Norwalk Police Department of a Bridgeport man who knowingly was mixing fentanyl with heroin and part of his distribution actually included carfentanil as well," she said.
The first confirmed presence of carfentanil in the region was in Rhode Island about a year ago, Ferguson said. Since then, he said there has been 10 confirmed carfentanil related deaths in New Hampshire and one in Maine, in addition to seizures in Massachusetts.
In May, there were two overdoses deaths linked to carfentanil, Daly said, the first in Norwalk and the other in Bridgeport.
Special Agent Ferguson said carfentanil is making its way into New England through web purchases from China or from Mexican drug cartels trafficking it across the southwest border.
"They need to be held responsible for their actions," Ferguson said. "For putting this poison on the street and for the misery that they’re spreading."
But both Ferguson and Daly said part of their mission is to educate the public, especially youth.
The DEA and members of the U.S. Attorney’s office have met with 20,000 Connecticut students in 50 high schools about the dangers of opioid addiction, Daly said.
"It is manufactured death," Ferguson said. "You don’t get second chances with fentanyl and carfentanil, it’s not something that you should experiment with.”
In Connecticut, 917 people died from an overdose in 2016 and a majority of the victims were between 18 and 26 years old, Daly said. She predicts that number could rise about 1,000 in 2017.
