A dangerous drug has been flowing into Montana at record rates. According to the Montana Department of Justice, anti-drug task forces have seized twice as much fentanyl through September 30 of 2022 than they did the last four years combined.
But law enforcement testing for this new drug has some unforeseen challenges. Montana Attorney General Knudsen explains more.
“One of the challenges with fentanyl, especially in the form that we get it, which is primarily in a pressed tablet, or pill is it is taking more resources at our crime lab to test it. Obviously, we know fentanyl is in there in most cases, but with these fentanyl tablets what we’re finding is the cartels are just mixing so much other garbage in with the fentanyl tablets, and that’s where we’re seeing new stuff. So that’s taking more resources. It takes more time to test those tablets because one tablet might be 90 percent fentanyl and then that last 10 percent a bonding agent maybe a little bit of ibuprofen, but the next tablet might have five percent fentanyl, but then be loaded up with all kinds of other new stuff. That’s what’s concerning to me is that we are seeing a lot of novel, new synthetic drugs primarily that we really haven’t seen before.”-Attorney General Knudsen
