By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
College students intermingled with community members at Thursday evening's town hall meeting to hear about the dangers of fentanyl and its impact on Kansas and Ellis County.
"It's a sad reality that there is no community in our state, that there is no demographic in Kansas that is immune from fentanyl," said Tony Mattivi, director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.
Mattivi, a former paramedic and prosecutor appointed in January by Gov. Laura Kelly, was the keynote speaker for the meeting hosted by High Plains Mental Health Center at Fort Hays State University.
"It's even hit the KBI," he said.
"We have a very senior, very experienced agent at the KBI who woke up one morning to discover his 18-year-old son dead from an overdose of fentanyl," Mattivi said. "I tell you this because he wants to share his tragedy with Kansans. He wants you to become educated about the problem."
Pharmaceutical fentanyl is a synthetic opioid approved for treating severe pain, typically advanced cancer pain, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine; two milligrams is a fatal dose of fentanyl.
Most recent cases of fentanyl-related harm, overdose, and death in the U.S. are linked to illegally-made fentanyl. It's sold through illegal drug markets for its heroin-like effect.
About three years ago, the fentanyl was coming from China.
"We know the precursor chemicals are now being sent from China and India to Mexico," Mattivi said. "The drug cartels are manufacturing the fentanyl in Mexico - in pills, powders and liquids - and it's being brought into the U.S. across our southern border and it's being distributed from there through all the historical cartel supply lines."
It's the most profitable drug our society has ever seen, he said.
"In January, a fentanyl pill cost $20 to $30. We made a KBI purchase this week for $2.50 a pill, and it's getting cheaper.
"The cartels are trying to addict users, not kill them."
Dr. Steve Waring, who leads the Hays Medical Center Opioid Task Force, and Dr. Lee Smith, High Plains Mental Health psychiatry specialist, talked about the effects of fentanyl on the body, and how to obtain and use Naloxone, a medication that can reverse an overdose. Known as Narcan, the over-the-counter nasal spray is readily available and can be used on anyone.
Several of the night's speakers encouraged people, especially teens and young adults, to keep Narcan on their person.
Even with targeted enforcement efforts to combat fentanyl and to interrupt its trafficking, Mattivi said "we are not going to be able to enforce our way out of this problem."
"We have to educate. We need the public's help.
"We have to educate our kids. We need parents to understand how dangerous this is for their kids. We need them to understand how it's getting out there to the kids - that social media is being used to distribute fentanyl.
"This really does need to be a call on society response to this epidemic."
Ellis County Sheriff Scott Braun asked for "the eyes and ears of young people particularly. You're out there. You see this stuff.
"Report it to someone who can make a difference. One life taken is too much."
Both the sheriff and police departments have anonymous crime tipping resources on their respective web sites.
Fentanyl is available in many different forms, and mixed with other illegal drugs including crack cocaine and methamphetamine. It's even being sprayed on marijuana.
"We had someone in Kansas who died smoking a joint that they didn't know was laced with fentanyl," Mattivi said.
The drug is also sold in pill form as pure fentanyl.
"And then, tragically, we're seeing it mixed in with other (prescribed) drugs where you really wouldn't expect it like Percocet, or Adderall, or Xanax.
"So, if a young person takes a pill that they didn't get from a pharmacist, there's no way of knowing that there's not fentanyl in that pill."
The KBI recently formed the Joint Fentanyl Impact Team in collaboration with the Kansas Highway Patrol and several federal partners.
"We're going after every modality by which fentanyl can be trafficked into and through our state," Mattivi said.
"The Highway Patrol has historically done a wonderful job of highway interdiction, which means intercepting the loads that are being transported on the highway but we need to go beyond that.
"We're gonna go after motor carriers. We believe they're transporting fentanyl on buses, on rail, by air, by package shipments."
Sitting at the intersection of Interstate 70 and Highway U.S. 183, Hays is located in the midst of a favored drug traffic corridor, Mattivi said.
Hays Police Chief Don Scheibler has previously said that counterfeit pills and fentanyl are the biggest drug threat in the community and that overdoses and deaths are occurring in Hays.
In Kansas, it is now a felony to cause a drug death by illegal distribution of that drug.