U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis says that 7 pounds of fentanyl can kill the Triad's population of 1.7 million people (2024)

U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., displayed a container that he said represented seven pounds of fentanyl, which is enough to kill the entire 1.7 million population of the Piedmont Triad.

“That’s enough to do it,” Tillis said. “Just this one container — and it gives you a sense of what we are up against when you think about the kinds of fentanyl that is coming into this country every year.”

Tillis obtained that statistic from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration based on that agency’s public statement about the potential of 2.2 pounds of fentanyl being enough to kill 500,000 people, said Adam Webb, a Tillis spokesman.

Fentanyl is killing 70,000 U.S. residents every year, Tillis said.

Tillis shared those statistics Tuesday at a public-safety roundtable at Biotech Place in downtown Winston-Salem. Tillis was joined by Mayor Allen Joines, Police Chief William H. Penn Jr. and District Attorney Jim O’Neill.

Joines told Tillis that more than 1,400 city residents have died in drug overdoses in the past five years.

In North Carolina, 3,396 people died of fentanyl overdoses in 2022, the latest available number on fentanyl-related deaths in the state, said Summer Tonizzo, a spokeswoman for the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.

Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid used to treat severe pain related to surgery or complex pain conditions, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Fentanyl is part of a national epidemic of drug overdose deaths in the United States.

Winston-Salem police need more resources from the federal government to reduce drug overdoses in the city, Penn said at the roundtable.

“We have to make sure that people think twice before they peddle this stuff,” Penn said.

When drug traffickers who are accused of possessing at least 28 grams of fentanyl in state courts, judges can sentence them to serve 18½ years in state prison, O’Neill said.

Many accused drug traffickers of fentanyl want to face federal charges because the punishments are less severe than they would receive in state courts, O’Neill said. People convicted on federal offenses connected to fentanyl are sentenced to five-year prison terms, he said.

O’Neill told Tillis that Congress must increase the punishment for the traffickers of fentanyl and illegal drugs.

“The federal laws must be tougher,” O’Neill said. “We want to get those people off the streets as long as possible.”

The panel also included Ashton Parrinello, a firefighter with the Winston-Salem Fire Department, and Addison McDowell of Raleigh, a Republican candidate for the U.S House in the Sixth Congressional District.

Parrinello said that about 25% of the calls that he and his fellow firefighters respond to in eastern Winston-Salem involve drug overdoses.

“We are not really able to give a lot of people the proper treatment,” Parrinello said. “We show up on (the) scene and give them Narcan and revive them. At lot times, they don’t want to go to a hospital.”

“I cannot force them to go to the hospital for them to seek treatment,” Parrinello said.

Kristin Ryan, the director of Winston-Salem’s Behavioral Evaluation and Response Team and Dr. Andrea Fernandez of Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist, also participated in the roundtable.

For the past year, the city’s BEAR counselors answered 2,800 calls through 911 about people suffering mental-health issues, substance abuse or domestic violence, Ryan said.

Counselors take these people to hospitals, rehab centers or other places to help them, Ryan said.

“If they call, we come,” Ryan said. “We stay with them, and we follow up.”

The hospital evaluates overdose patients and helps them with their addictions, Fernandez said.

Survivors of overdoses often pose a danger to other hospital patients and the medical personnel, Fernandez said.

“Workplace violence is real,” she said.

The local community needs more organizations addressing the mental-health needs of people who overdose on drugs, Fernandez said.

“They don’t have a place to go,” Fernandez said. “Getting a spot in a rehab center is really hard.”

At the roundtable, McDowell said his 20-year-old brother died of fentanyl overdose in Charlotte in 2016.

“He had his own demons, and he battled with (them)” McDowell said. “He took something that he thought was something else. We were told later on that it was pure fentanyl.”

Reducing the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs requires a law enforcement response and addressing mental-health needs of substance abusers, McDowell said.

Law enforcement agencies should consider illegal drug manufacturers and distributors “as if they are people who are trafficking weapons of mass destruction,” Tillis said. “I don’t think it’s hyperbole. I think it’s a reality.”

Tillis also showed the participants a graphic that showed Chinese ships delivering the precursors chemicals to produce fentanyl to Mexico, where drug cartels manufacture fentanyl.

The cartels then distribute fentanyl throughout the United States, including into North Carolina.

The federal government can play a role in reducing the supply of illegal drugs coming into the country, Tillis said, especially fentanyl coming across the border.

“Reducing the supply reduces the availability and increases the costs,” Tillis said. “This is a public safety threat not only to individual citizens in North Carolina and the country, but to every single person who is a first responder or involved in public safety.”

The majority of illegal drugs comes into the country in hidden compartments in vehicles and in the vehicle’s tires, Tillis said.

Drug dealers also use the U.S. Postal Service to deliver fentanyl to the nation’s cities and towns.

Tillis encouraged the city of Winston-Salem as well as the Winston-Salem police and fire departments to apply for federal money provided in the Safer Community Act.

The law established measures designed to reduce mass shootings, including spending on behavioral health clinics, funding for school safety efforts and restrictions on gun ownership by ex-convicts and people found by a court to be mentally ill.