There has been an almost 11,000 percent increase in fentanyl seizures in Montana since 2019, according to the state’s attorney general.
In 2022, the Rocky Mountain High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (RMHIDTA)—a federal program that consists of 30 counties altogether in Colorado, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming—confiscated 206,955 dosage units of fentanyl in The Treasure State, a 10,800 percent increase since 2019, when 1,900 dosage units of the drug were seized.
Last year’s figure is also 146,378 more dosage units than in 2021, or three times more said Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen in a Feb. 24 press release.
Just over 66 percent of the drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2021—the last time drug overdose deaths were reported by the CDC—were due to fentanyl….