SINCE my article last week regarding the North American fentanyl crisis and my concern about that crisis coming to Jamaica, I have received numerous e-mail asking me to explain why this drug is special.

I have been asked to explain if its use is likely to cause a crisis here, and why I think that it requires special consideration in law. I will, therefore, use today’s article to explain my reasoning.

Firstly, fentanyl is considered 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. To help explain my position I’ll tell you a story. When my father had his leg amputated in 2009 he was given morphine. It was the first and only time I had ever seen my father — who was the most sensible, logical, and lucid person I had ever known — behave as if he was crazy.

For days he suffered from acute paranoia. It was mind-boggling, to say the least. I shudder to think what effect a drug that is 50 to 100 times more potent than the drug they gave my father could have on a person.

A substance crisis comes with its own dynamic, depending on the type. Alcohol abuse impacts domestic violence, motor vehicle fatalities, and creates long-term health issues. Marijuana can cause mental illness, if abused. Crack comes with the “crackhead” phenomenon wherein the drug becomes all that matters. Fentanyl will kill you. It’s that simple.

Seventy per cent of all overdose deaths in the United States are caused by fentanyl. However, not everyone who takes fentanyl dies. If you think that a great number of people going into hospital and dying can overtax a health sector, can you imagine the ones who don’t die and have to be treated?

We already have a struggling health sector — and that’s putting it mildly. Can you imagine a massive crisis of sick and dying people who are from an age group that is normally healthy? They are then simply added to the group that is already putting a strain on the health sector — those being the over-50 group with diabetes and heart disease.

There is also ease of use. Smoking, snorting and injecting are not normal acts for a human being. But swallowing is. Pills are easy to use, hence the likelihood of people trying it. Fentanyl is barely distinguishable; you could be told it’s ecstasy or Molly. Once you take fentanyl you can become immediately addicted.

Turning people into addicts is an effective way to create a customer for life. However, it is also a way to facilitate human trafficking and human control. Human trafficking is one area about which the Jamaican public has been properly educated in recent years. That is why it is not as prevalent here as it is in other environments. But ‘human control’ has not been discussed nearly as much.

Many years ago I met a crack addict who confessed to me that a man had given him eight balls of crack as payment for killing another man. The addict was not a violent man prior to the addiction. He was not the type of man others could control or give orders before crack ruled him. However, he became violent and the person controlling him was a crack dealer.

The fentanyl addict can become a sex slave, a killer, a kidnapper. It will all depend on what the dealer wants him to be, because the dealer becomes the puppeteer. There are laws governing the distribution of drugs that fall under the categories of ‘prepared opium’, ‘raw opium’, and ‘medicinal opium’. Improper distribution carries decent enough sentences at the Supreme Court level, but limits of five years in parish courts. I imagine this would include fentanyl.

After what fentanyl has done in the US I want it to have its own category here. I would like to see no leniency for people convicted of illegally dealing in it. Think on this: Five Texans die daily from fentanyl abuse. More than 2,000 of them died between August 2022 and August 2023. Remember, I’m not referring to an illness like cancer, AIDS, or heart disease. This is death caused by evil and greed; the consumption of one drug sold by criminals.

We are having a labour crisis in Jamaica; we can’t find people to work. We simply can’t afford to kill our productive labour force or watch them becoming drug-dazed and useless. Countries like Singapore and Taiwan don’t allow for the creation of a drug crisis. They simply execute anyone who imports illegal drugs of any kind. Principally, I agree with their mindset. My only issue with capital punishment is the inability to reverse a mistake.

But does a man who sells fentanyl illegally deserve to die? Yes, he does; As do rapists, murderers, kidnappers, human traffickers, and drug kingpins. The Americans were caught unaware by local capitalism, followed by illegal importers. They didn’t see it coming. The cartels drove the supply chain to the catastrophe it became.

We, on the other hand, have seen the effects of the fentanyl crisis on them and have time to get in front of it. We can utilise public information efforts, hard-line laws with mandatory sentencing, and customs training and enforcement.

The essence of my argument is preparation and prevention. It may be optimistic. We are going to have an issue, but we have prisons with facilities that make zoos look more humane.

Let us use them to stop the fentanyl crisis in its tracks.

Feedback: drjasonamckay@gmail.com