Weld K9 makes significant Fentanyl find while assisting Longmont PD

Published on March 16, 2022

A Weld County Sheriff’s Office K9 team recently located a significant cache of illegal Fentanyl while assisting Longmont police with a traffic stop.

At 5:35 p.m. Monday, Feb. 28, deputies responded to the 300 block of Lashley Court in Longmont to perform an open-air sniff of a blue car driven by a known drug dealer. Deputies deployed K9 Viper, who alerted to drugs being inside the vehicle.

Longmont police officers searched the vehicle, finding a black container filled with counterfeit 30 milligram Oxycontin pills laced with Fentanyl, also known as M30s. Officers later informed deputies they seized 9.3 grams of the lethal drug, or 93 pills.

There are countless cases in Weld County and throughout the state of victims overdosing on just one counterfeit pill laced with Fentanyl. Last month’s K9 assist saved as many as 93 lives.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat severe or chronic pain following surgery. It’s similar to morphine but about 100 times more potent, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Illicit Fentanyl is manufactured overseas and smuggled into the U.S. through Mexico, according to the DEA. It’s often mixed with other illicit drugs to increase its potency or pressed into pills to imitate legitimate prescription drugs, such as Adderall, Oxycontin and Xanax.

Producing illicit Fentanyl isn’t an exact science. DEA analysis of seized counterfeit pills has found Fentanyl concentrations ranging from .02 milligrams to more than five milligrams. Two milligrams is a lethal dose.

Drug traffickers typically distribute Fentanyl by the kilogram. One kilogram has the potential to kill 500,000 people, according to the DEA. 

Fentanyl overdose deaths rose 38.1 percent in 2021 compared to 2020. It accounted for more than 55 percent of all drug overdose deaths in the U.S. last year.

In 2021, the Weld County Drug Task Force, a multi-agency unit housed at the Greeley Police Department, seized 11,913 counterfeit M30 pills. That’s enough Fentanyl to kill more than 11 percent of the people residing in the city of Greeley.

For more information and resources, visit https://www.dea.gov/resources/facts-about-fentanyl.

Anyone with information regarding this or any other crime is asked to call the Weld County Sheriff’s Office at (970) 356-4015 or Northern Colorado Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477). Tips can also be submitted through the Crime Stoppers website at www.NoCoCrimeStoppers.com. Those submitting tips through Crime Stoppers that lead to the arrest and filing of charges on a suspect(s) may be eligible for a cash reward.