The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration considers fentanyl “the nation’s greatest and most urgent drug threat.”
The Utah News Dispatch reports Utah has already seized a record number of fentanyl pills this year.
In 2023, the Drug Enforcement Administration and its local partners seized more than 664,000 fentanyl pills, setting the single-year record. By June of this year, the record had already been broken. Over 774,000 pills have been seized in the state in just six months.
There aren’t typically large seizures in Summit and Wasatch counties, said Utah Highway Patrol Lt. Brent Shelby, because neither county is a hub.
“Salt Lake City is a hub location where narcotics that are destined for Utah will often go. They'll be broken up into smaller quantities and then distributed around the state through local dealers,” he said. “Park City, Summit County and Wasatch County aren't really the hub or the warehouse location. So, we generally don't see the large, large seizures going to there, unless we catch it transiting through the area to another area.”
Each law enforcement agency keeps its own count.
The Summit County Sheriff’s Office has confiscated more than 450 fentanyl pills so far this year, including a single stop where a Wyoming woman had hidden 400 pills in her underwear. That’s compared to 2023 when deputies found fewer than 90 pills all year.
KPCW is waiting to hear back from the Wasatch County Sheriff’s Office about its numbers for the first half of the year.
As for UHP, troopers have seized almost 200 pills across Summit and Wasatch counties as of July. That’s compared to last year when Shelby said troopers found 19 pounds of pills headed for Denver in Summit County. That’s more than 85,000 pills.
Shelby said the majority of UHP’s seizures happen during traffic stops on Interstates 15 and 70 in southern Utah. However, I-80 is also a distribution route.
“That 19-pound fentanyl pill seizure that we had up there, the trooper conducted a traffic stop for a normal traffic violation that we stop every day, made contact with the individuals that were there,” Shelby said. “There were some suspicious circumstances that he began to investigate, and then during that investigation is when we uncovered the narcotics.”
From there, UHP determines where the narcotics came from and their final destination. That information is then handed over to the courts.
The cost of a single pill has decreased in recent years. Utah News Dispatch reports the average price was $25 to $30 per pill in 2018. In 2023, the street price was around $2.
