The Didier family of Rocklin, California, just outside Sacramento, likes Christmas movies. Last December, it was the day after Christmas, but Chris Didier and two of his three children sat down to watch “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” one more time.
When the movie ended, 17-year-old Zach, a track star, straight A student and self-taught musician with his sights set on Stanford, headed to his bedroom.
As Chris recalls, his son said, “I had a good time, love you Dad, good night.”
At noon the next day, when Zach didn’t answer a knock on his door, Chris entered his bedroom. Zach was slumped over the computer keyboard at his desk, where he had filled out his college applications just weeks before.
“You never imagine there would be danger,” said Chris, his voice cracking. “You would think your child’s safe when they’re at home. You would think they would be safe when they’re in their room.”
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Chris and his wife Laura say Zach — who would’ve turned 18 this week — bought what he thought was a prescription pain pill from someone he met on Snapchat. They don’t know why he bought it — perhaps for soreness from his workouts, perhaps to help him sleep.
But the pill was counterfeit, and contained a lethal amount of the powerful opioid fentanyl.
Earlier this month, the Drug Enforcement Administration made a huge bust in Mexico, seizing 600,000 counterfeit pharmaceutical pills. They’re made to look like real prescription drugs of various types, and would’ve been sold as everything from Adderall to Percocet to Xanax, but they actually included fentanyl, which is up to 50 times more powerful than heroin. The DEA worries that traffickers who are trying to fool casual drug users into buying “prescription” drugs are going to wind up killing them.
Ray Donavan, the DEA’s special agent in charge in New York, showed NBC News a batch of phony oxycodone pills that look exactly like the real things.
Traffickers are using fentanyl, said Donovan, because “it’s cheap, it’s synthetic, it’s easy to make, and it’s so lucrative.”
But just two milligrams of fentanyl can kill an adult, according to the DEA, and there is no quality control. Donavan estimated that one in four of the pills seized by the DEA has enough fentanyl to pose the risk of death.
Some of the pills are pressed in pill machines in the U.S., but most are made in Mexico. According to Donovan, it marks an attempt by traffickers to expand their market.
“When we first saw fentanyl come into the U.S., we saw the hardcore street users utilizing heroin mixed with fentanyl. With the pills, they’re trying to draw in young adults, high schoolers — you know, people on the weekend that never used drugs or don’t have an addiction problem.”Donovan said the chance that any so-called prescription drug purchased via social media might actually contain fentanyl is “very high.” Fentanyl-related deaths in the U.S. hit 36,000 in 2019, the most recent year for which Centers for Disease Control figures are available, but it is not known what portion are related to counterfeit pills. The CDC says preliminary numbers indicate deaths from synthetic opioids have accelerated during the Covid pandemic.
In January, federal authorities in Sacramento issued a multi-count indictment against 10 individuals from California and Nevada for trafficking of fentanyl-laced oxycodone pills. Prosecutors said wiretaps showed the defendants were aware that multiple deaths in the Sacramento area had been linked to the pills.
Chris and Laura Didier recently attended the arraignment of a man charged with selling Zach the counterfeit pill that led to his death. The man has not yet entered a plea.
They want those responsible to be held accountable, but they also want to warn the public.
“As soon as we started putting the puzzle together, it was like, we need to ring the alarm bells,” said Laura, ”because we don’t want anyone else to go through this. We don’t want anybody else to go through this.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
