Governor Greg Abbott met with law enforcement in North Texas Tuesday to talk about "heartbreaking statistics" around fentanyl deaths. According to the CDC, 40,010 people in the United States died from fentanyl poisoning from April 2020 to April 2021, more than died in car crashes or committed suicide.
In Texas, 1,334 people died from fentanyl in 2021.
"Most of the fentanyl comes from China, through Mexico, brought across the border by cartels," Abbott said. "It's infiltrating our communities, our families, our schools."
"It's almost like they're weaponizing this drug coming into our country poisoning our children," Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn said.
Waybourn cited DEA numbers showing four in ten fentanyl pills seized last year were fatal.
"This pill is completely indiscriminate," Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn said. "It's going into gated communities, it's going into inner cities. It goes all over our country."
In Collin County, Sheriff Jim Skinner said the county has seen a 485% increase in fentanyl poisoning over the past three years. He said investigators are now finding fentanyl in recreational drugs like cocaine, heroin, and ecstacy.
"The fact is there's simply no margin for error left in recreational drug use," Skinner said.
Skinner serves on the board of directors at the National Sheriffs Association and said, "the number one issue, public safety issue that concerns every sheriff in this country, is the number of fentanyl poisonings that are taking place."
Abbott said law enforcement discussed the possibility of treating fentanyl deaths as poisoning instead of an overdose. With that classification, he said the case would be treated as a homicide.
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