Mass Fentanyl Poisoning in One State Leaves Three Children Dead

By: Jennie Taer, Daily Caller News Foundation

Children have been poisoned by fentanyl for weeks, resulting in three deaths and even more hospitalizations in one area of Texas, according to The Dallas Morning News.

Three young students attending Carrollton-Farmers Branch schools near Dallas are dead and six others have been hospitalized as a result of fentanyl exposure linked to one home in the area, where minors picked up drugs to later sell to their peers at school, according to The Dallas Morning News, which obtained a criminal complaint. Fentanyl, which is made mainly by the Mexican drug cartels using chemicals from China, is largely responsible for the more than 100,000 overdose deaths that happened in 2021, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.

“To deal fentanyl is to knowingly imperil lives. To deal fentanyl to minors — naive middle and high school students — is to shatter futures,” U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Leigha Simonton told The Dallas Morning News.

One of the victims was a 14-year-old girl, who overdosed and almost died twice on an “M30” tablet, which can mimic oxycodone, hydrocodone, alprazolam (Xanax) and Adderall, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. A 13-year-old is also one of the nine victims.

The young girl overdosed first on Christmas Eve, when she was taken to the hospital, and later on Jan. 16 when she was temporarily paralyzed from the incident, according to The Dallas Morning News.

Law enforcement pursued the case with surveillance at the supplier’s home, where a student was dealt drugs, according to The Dallas Morning News. A school resource officer later detained a student after hearing them “making a ‘snorting sound’” in the bathroom.

Fentanyl continues to threaten young Americans, including babies who are sometimes exposed in utero and in their early years, experts recently told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“The country has never experienced anything like this and we need a greater sense of urgency to cut off the supply from the Mexican Cartels,” former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Operations Division Derek Maltz told the DCNF.