Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
PRICE — The highway headed into Price has more roadkill on it than moving cars. Through the windy canyons, there is an abandoned, sunken ghost town and periods of time without cellphone reception. U.S. 6 may seem out-of-sight and out-of-mind to northern city slickers, but it is one of the routes drug traffickers take to distribute fentanyl and heroin to dealers across the state.
Price, in the heart of Utah's Carbon County, is at the crossroads of a growing, deadly drug problem in Utah.
With a population of just over 8,000 residents, this rural city has seen the devastation of opioid addiction and fentanyl use firsthand. Many residents work blue-collar jobs with a higher potential for on-the-job injuries, and the county's poverty rate exceeds what is typically seen on the Wasatch Front.
The rate of opioid-related deaths in Carbon County and its two neighboring counties, Grand and Emery, overwhelmingly exceeds the state's death rate. Utah's overall rate is 18.3 deaths per 100,000 people, but these counties on the highway from Mexico to Salt Lake City see a death rate of 42.7 per 100,000 people, according to the most recent data on the Utah Department of Health and Human Services from 2021. The rate of opioid prescriptions? It is also higher.
Numbers yet to be finalized for 2023, expected to be released in an analysis later this month, show a dramatic rise.
Fentanyl has become "the most significant drug threat," according to a recent report from the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, the group appointed by the White House to coordinate the federal, state and local response to violent drug trafficking organizations.
"Unprecedented levels of availability and demand have flooded the region with fentanyl pills, and increasingly, fentanyl powder," the report states. "A significant decline in price, high potency, and common use in polydrug compounds, which continues to drive fatal overdoses, elevates the threat of fentanyl throughout local communities in the Rocky Mountain region."
To understand the fentanyl epidemic, the Deseret News searched through years of data and interviewed more than 20 people connected to the crisis, including those in recovery, former fentanyl distributors, law enforcement officials and recovery specialists. This is the first in a series of articles analyzing the problem and seeking potential solutions.
More potent than morphine, fentanyl has flooded the streets. According to the Drug Enforcement Agency, 7 out of every 10 fentanyl pills contain a lethal dose. And as fentanyl is on the rise, so are two other opioids — xylazine and carfentanil.
Carfentanil is a synthetic opioid like fentanyl but stronger. It is used for tranquilizing elephants and other large mammals. It is 100 times more potent than fentanyl and can be lethal at a mere 2-milligrams (a fraction of a penny), said Bill Newell, coordinator for the Utah Crime Gun Intelligence Center. Xylazine, sometimes called tranq, is a sedative and muscle relaxer used on animals. On the streets, it is mixed with fentanyl.
Naloxone, used to combat heroin, will not reverse an overdose.
The vast majority of fentanyl is manufactured outside the U.S., says Dustin Gillespie, the assistant special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Rocky Mountain Division. Fentanyl is made by the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels in Mexico, said Gillespie, who along with other DEA agents, Enoch Smith and Brandon Scott, spoke to the Deseret News at the agency's Salt Lake City office.
"They need to get the precursor chemicals from somewhere, and they don't produce those in Mexico," said Gillespie. "So, they have to get them from China and, to a lesser extent, India." Since those precursor chemicals have legitimate uses, it makes it difficult to monitor.
The chemicals are mislabeled when they are shipped from China to Mexico, and the cartels will acquire them at ports along the western seaboard, said Gillespie. The fentanyl drug market is decentralized because it does not take much equipment to make the drug.
"It's all through extortion and violence. There is no retirement plan," said Gillespie. People who make fentanyl often die due to exposure or are killed by the cartel, Gillespie explained.
The cartels have oversaturated the market with fentanyl, and Price, seat of Carbon County, sits right on a highway drug traffickers use.
'This is my opportunity to live the life I should have lived'
Price resident Allison Jackson is someone who knows firsthand the devastating impact opioids can have. After police arrested Jackson for drug distribution, she sat in the Emery County jail for two months wondering how she got there. Jackson's drug addiction started when she was 28 years old after a doctor prescribed her pain medication.
Jackson said she experienced withdrawals after the pills were abruptly taken away. As a young mother of four children at the time, she said going through these withdrawals took away time from her children and she had the itch to find more pills. So she did.
And then she developed an addiction to opioids and eventually heroin.
"Continuing in my addiction instead of seeking help sooner means I walked away from my kids, my home, any relationship that was meaningful to me because my addiction had control," Jackson said in an interview.
