were taking it. They were poisoned unwittingly by a pill that appeared to be some type of real medication,” Gov. Greg Abbott said at a press conference regarding fentanyl activity Sept. 21. At the tail end of the 2021-22 school year, HCISD o cials began to take notice of the silent killer that had in l- trated its students. “We had our rst incident where we had to use our Narcan toward the end of May. We knew that we had had some suspected cases of fentanyl use,” HCISD Chief Communication O cer Tim Savoy said. “That’s prob- ably about when we rst noticed that there might be a problem.” Narcan, also referred to as naloxone, is a medicine used to reverse an opioid overdose. HCISD now has Narcan avail- able on all campuses across the district, and school resource o cers who patrol schools also have it at the ready. Despite its ability to reverse an overdose, it is not a perfect safety net, according to Kyle Police Chief Je Barnett. A dose of Narcan used to be 2 milligrams but has increased to 4 milligrams. “That is because it was not specif- ically designed for fentanyl use; it was designed for an opioid overdose,” said Kevin Hager, TNG Drug Demand Reduction Outreach Program manager. “Because fentanyl itself is so potent, they increased the dose of it, but it still requires more than a single dose in most cases.” The clandestine killer Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid used for pain management and is pre- scribed by doctors for severe pain and advanced-stage cancer, accord- ing to the CDC. However, the fentanyl that is taking lives across the country is known as illicit fentanyl, created OVERDOSE DEATHS SKYROCKETING From January 2019 to April 2022, the number of opioid and synthetic opioid deaths in Texas more than doubled. However, the data from January 2021 to April 2022 is underreported due to incomplete data. SOURCE: CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION COMMUNITY IMPACT
DEATHS
Opioids heroin, morphine, opium, oxycodone
Synthetic opioids fentanyl, methadone
FENTANYL FUNDAMENTALS There are technically two types of fentanyl—pharmaceutical and illicitly manufactured; both of which are synthetic, though the latter is what accounts for overdoses and deaths.
3,000
95.75%
2,500
from Jan. 2019 to April 2022
2,000
1,500
1,000
from Jan. 2019 to April 2022 490.88%
the amount of fentanyl that is considered a deadly dose. 2 MG
500
0
2019
2020
2021
2022
COURTESY DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION
A call to action The DEA, KPD and HCSO held a joint press conference Sept. 8 as an autopsy yielded a fourth student death due to fentanyl. Autopsies are ordered by a Hays County justice of the peace, of which there are six, covering di erent parts of the county. “Kyle just happens to be the bus- iest precinct,” Precinct 2 Justice of the Peace Beth Smith said. “I guess it’s because I’m the sole JP here, and in San Marcos there are two covering the same territory.” At crime scenes, it is up to the JP to determine whether to order an autopsy. However, all autopsies for Hays County are conducted by the Tra- vis County Medical Examiner’s o ce. Beth Smith said that autopsy results take around 90 days, and she still has outstanding autopsies pending. To combat the spike in fentanyl activity in the area, the DEA and TNG are partnering with local law enforce- ment agencies to create a task force to track down and arrest individuals ped- dling pills containing illicit fentanyl, DEA Assistant Special Agent Tyson Hodges said at the press conference. “We have joined with federal, state and local law enforcement partners to help us quickly identify related fentanyl deaths and to immediately initiate a criminal investigation and to share resources with all of our part- ners, and they’re doing the same with us,” Barnett said. “What might take days or weeks in the past now takes minutes to hours.” Progress has already been made as Barnett announced two arrests at the Sept. 8 press conference. Anthony Jean Perez Rios, a 20-year-old from San Marcos, was arrested and faces charges of alleged manufacture/
through pill-pressing laboratories. Fentanyl seeps its way into the country through transnational crime organizations that smuggle across the Canadian and Mexican borders. China is also one of the primary sources of fentanyl and fentanyl-related sub- stances, according to the Drug Enforce- ment Administration. Local law enforcement agencies began to take note of the illusive opi- oid sweeping the nation as it began to claim lives in the area. “For many years, overdose calls were not typically a police matter. … But when people started dying more regu- larly, it certainly became a police mat- ter, and we started devoting resources to it,” Barnett said. Since late 2021, the Kyle Police Department has responded to at least 25 fentanyl-related overdoses, which included seven deaths. The Hays County Sheri ’s O ce has responded to 10 overdose deaths from July 2021- 22. O cials estimate the true number could be higher. “That does not count the calls that the city of Kyle has gone to, the city of Buda, the city of San Marcos,” Hays County Deputy Anthony Hipolito said. “These are just calls that our sheri ’s o ce has gone to that ended up in death.” Because the fentanyl-related deaths began slowly in 2021 and ramped up in 2022, local law enforcement agencies did not track them as closely as they are now, Barnett said. “In the early months, it was still a new phenomenon for our region, so we weren’t necessarily tracking them as part of the bigger picture. They were new to our area and more treated as independent events. There was no trend, really, to see at that point,” Bar- nett said.
PHARMACEUTICAL
Prescribed by doctors for severe pain, advanced-stage cancer Applied via a patch on the skin
ILLICITLY MANUFACTURED
Pill-pressing organizations Fentanyl synthesis laboratories Coming into US from: • China • Mexico • India • Canada
SOURCES: CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION, DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION COMMUNITY IMPACT
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Fentanyl is the No. 1 leading cause of death in people ages 18-45, and 99% of fentanyl overdoses are an accident, according to the Texas National Guard. “There was nothing that I would say that stood out to me, thinking back, absolutely nothing. I wish there was [a red ag],” Shannon McConville said. “But I cannot think about that because … there’s nothing that is going to bring my son back. The only thing we can do is prevent it from happening to some other family.” Kevin was set to begin his senior year at Lehman High School in August and is one of the four HCISD students to die from a fentanyl overdose, or “poisoning,” since July. “Unfortunately, most who die from fentanyl didn’t even know that they
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