'I have an 11-year-old and I can imagine him seeing these little things and thinking they’re like SweeTarts,' said public health nurse Amy Butts in Kodiak, where police have found candy-colored rainbow fentanyl pills of the potentially deadly opioid.
Public health officials say rainbow fentanyl, like the pills seen here, have been seen in Kodiak and are contributing to overdoses.
Amy Butts is a public health nurse and team lead at the Kodiak Public Health Center. She said there’s been a worrying trend in local overdoses over the last three to four weeks. Butts says she doesn’t have up-to-date data on overdoses in Kodiak, but the Kodiak Police Department says it has also responded to an increase in calls about overdoses over that same time period, according to the department’s public information officer Francis de la Fuente.
That last part is particularly worrying to Butts. Rainbow fentanyl hasn’t been confirmed yet by state officials in Alaska. But just last month, said the multi-colored fentanyl pills that resemble candy had turned up in 18 states. One pill can contain a deadly amount of the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl, which has Butts on high alert.
McDaniel also said that Alaskans should be concerned about all types of fentanyl circulating within the state – a sentiment echoed by Butts and de la Fuente. , according to the state’s Department of Health, which said fentanyl had driven the trend. Overdose deaths in the state rose from 146 in 2020 to 253 in 2021, according to the department., which reverses the effects of an overdose.
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