Sheriff sounds alarm on fentanyl, which killed an average of one a day in Hennepin County last year

Hennepin County officials announced Thursday a redoubling of their efforts to combat the fentanyl epidemic that last year killed an average of one county resident each day.

As officials detailed their ongoing efforts to battle a drug that led American overdose deaths to crest to 100,000 people in 2021 — then increase again in 2022 — Sheriff Dawanna Witt beseeched Minnesotans to take the fentanyl crisis as seriously as the gun-violence crisis.

"It is easy to try to ignore it: Out of sight, out of mind," Witt said. "But last year fentanyl took several times as many lives as gun violence. We talk about gun violence almost on a daily basis. We need to be talking about the effects of fentanyl on a daily basis."

As Witt spoke, a group of families held photographs of loved ones killed by fentanyl: Joey Nash of Hugo, who loved fishing and skateboarding and had been sober eight months before dying of an overdose at age 28; Tyler Hein of Lindstrom, a Marine and avid outdoorsman who died of an overdose at 23; and Seth Carlson of Bloomington, whose mother, Tabbatha Urbanski, wore a T-shirt emblazoned with his face and the words, "Fentanyl Stole My Future."

The first time Urbanski's son tried fentanyl, Carlson was 14, a ninth-grader at John F. Kennedy High School in Bloomington, a former Cub Scout who played lineman for the football team.

A friend gave Carlson what he thought was a Percocet pill. It was fentanyl. Carlson later told his dad that from the first, he was hooked on the feeling fentanyl gave him, Urbanski said. For the next three years, he was in and out of treatment nearly a half-dozen times. He had three nonfatal overdoses.

One year ago, Urbanski thought her son was in a good spot. He'd been sober three months and was gaining momentum in life. Carlson had been through a program to get his GED and study carpentry. He was three weeks away from turning 18, and for the first time in years, Urbanski felt like he was her Seth again.

"The system is broken, very broken, especially for teenagers," Urbanski said. "It takes their brain far longer to recover, to come back from that, especially after three years of heavy use. A 30-day stint in rehab isn't going to do it."

The increase in local opioid deaths has been steep. In 2011, Hennepin County saw 79 opioid deaths, only four from fentanyl. By 2022, that number increased nearly fivefold to 378 opioid deaths, 358 of them fentanyl-related.

Between 2020 and 2022, three local interagency drug task forces seized nearly 120,000 fentanyl pills and more than 6 kilograms of fentanyl powder. This year, the task forces have seized enough fentanyl to kill every person in Hennepin County, according to Maj. Rick Palaia, who oversees the investigative bureau at the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office.

The county's new Focus on Fentanyl initiative adds heft to efforts county officials have taken in recent years to combat fentanyl. One Hennepin County detective works full time with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Sheriff's Office is stepping up efforts to investigate fentanyl deaths as third-degree homicides, which would hold dealers and providers of fentanyl accountable for overdose deaths.

But Witt emphasized the focus is not just on enforcement, sending people to jail and further criminalizing addiction. It's about reducing the damage fentanyl brings to the community. Hennepin County is scheduled to receive at least $42 million in opioid settlement funds over 18 years to combat the opioid crisis.

One of the biggest parts of the new initiative is public education, such as warning people that other drugs, such as cocaine or methamphetamine, are frequently mixed with fentanyl.

And the Focus on Fentanyl initiative's public-video campaign will detail the human toll of fentanyl; the first video, released Thursday, is about Urbanski's son.

"My No. 1 hope is to change the stigma around addiction," Urbanski said. "There's a line between holding people accountable and keeping our families and loved ones safe. Making things more punitive doesn't always solve the problem."

Among the family members surrounding the sheriff at Thursday's announcement, there was no shortage of grief — and anger, too. Fentanyl deaths, they said, seem like an outgrowth of societal avoidance of the problem. It can seem, one grieving mother said, like a willfully created crisis.

"I want to keep this as real as we can," said Suzanne Nash, who works for the Indigenous Peoples Task Force in Minneapolis and whose son, Joey, died of a fentanyl overdose in 2021. "Oxycodone came out, and Big Pharma knew exactly what they were doing: They created an entire generation of people addicted to oxycodone and other pills. When you got hurt in a football game or somewhere, when the doctor stopped prescribing your pills, you went to the streets.