HELENA – As communities around the state continue to reel from drug overdoses, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen is encouraging residents to remember those who have been lost from drug overdose and acknowledge the grief felt by their families and friends.
Fentanyl overdose deaths in Montana have skyrocketed since 2018, and opioid overdose emergency responses have increased 57 percent since last year.
“We are in the midst of an overdose crisis – in Montana and around the country. The illicit drugs coming across the nation’s southern border are destroying Montana families and communities – parents are losing their children and children are without parents,” Attorney General Knudsen said. “One pill can kill. Parents have to be talking to their kids about the dangers of drugs and keep an eye out for any unknown substances they might get their hands on.”
Earlier this month, Attorney General Knudsen announced that anti-drug forces in Montana are on pace to triple last year’s record-shattering fentanyl seizures and have already taken 58 times more fentanyl off the streets this year than in all of 2019. Through June 30, Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (RMHIDTA) task forces, which includes the Department of Justice’s narcotics bureau and state Highway Patrol criminal interdiction teams, seized 111,611 fentanyl dosage units in Montana, compared to the 60,577 dosage units seized in all of 2021.
To fight the problem in our state, Attorney General Knudsen has increased the number of Montana Department of Justice narcotic and major case agents, added a statewide drug intelligence officer who assists local law enforcement and public health agencies, and spearheaded a grant program that helped deploy two dozen drug detecting K9s around the state.
Fentanyl is being produced in industrial-scale cartel labs in Mexico from Chinese-made materials before its smuggled into the United States. Mexican cartels have also started targeting young people with rainbow fentanyl that is made to look like candy. Attorney General Knudsen joined Governor Greg Gianforte, Senator Steve Daines, Representative Matt Rosendale, and law enforcement officials this month to call on President Biden to secure the southern border to stop fentanyl flowing in from Mexico.
Attorney General Knudsen has been fighting the Biden administration’s disastrous border policies in federal court, engaging in multiple lawsuits to compel it to enforce existing immigration laws and secure the border. He also called on the Biden administration earlier this year to take a tougher stance toward China and Mexico against the influx of fentanyl.
