U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations panel, said Tuesday that there needs to be a national fentanyl-response strategy to combat a rising number of opioid-related deaths.
Fentanyl is an extremely potent synthetic opioid. It is 50 times more powerful than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine and has been linked to more than half of the nation’s drug overdose deaths.
Of the 47,000 opioid-related deaths reported in the United States in 2017, more than 28,000 involved synthetic opioids, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. This was a 47 percent increase from 2016, and fentanyl overdose deaths have spiked in recent years.
“This crisis is going to require a massive, coordinated effort to overcome,” DeGette said. “If we are going to solve this problem, we need better cooperation across agencies, and we need to think differently than we have on past drug epidemics.”
Fentanyl is often manufactured overseas and can be purchased anonymously on the internet. It is shipped by a private shipping company or U.S. mail in small quantities.
Last year, the Food and Drug Administration was given by law tools to combat illicit drugs coming into the United States through international mail facilities.