DEA warns cocaine laced with fentanyl killing more unsuspecting users

Cocaine is considered a Class B narcotic — with a lethal twist.

Cocaine is often diluted — “cut” — with a variety of substances including the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl. That’s where the bodies of unsuspecting users are piling up.

The Drug Enforcement Agency reported 29,918 deaths in 2023 due to cocaine overdoses, up 5% nationwide year-over-year, according to health figures.

“You can’t trust it,” said Stephen Belleau, the DEA’s acting special agent in charge for New England. “You just can’t try something once and expect to live through it. The days of experimenting should be over.”

The Mexican cartels are “flooding the streets” with fake pills pressed with fentanyl and lacing coke with the same “poison,” he told the Herald.

This warning comes as star Patriots defensive back Jabrill Peppers has been arrested on domestic assault and cocaine possession charges.

Belleau and others stressed that cartels from the Sinaloa cartel and rivals are using cheap fentanyl as a substitute for cocaine or to boost the high without considering the lives it puts at risk.

“Until we get serious about the border we are going to keep losing thousands of lives to fentanyl,” said Boston attorney George Price, a former DEA agent and expert on terrorism. “Cocaine has always been a problem and now it’s coming over laced.”

The Centers for Disease Control reported fentanyl alone caused nearly 75,000 deaths in 2023, with another 36,000-plus for meth added to the cocaine tally. That’s 100,000-plus overdoses due to this synthetic killer.

“If we lost 100,000 people in any other way we’d be in a world war,” Price added.

A the Herald reported last week, there were 68 opioid-related overdose deaths among Boston residents in the first four months of this year, compared to 102 deaths over the same time period in 2023.

Statewide, 2,125 confirmed and estimated opioid-related overdose deaths were reported in 2023.

Black, non-Hispanic men saw the rate of opioid-related overdose deaths increase from 80 per 100,000 people in 2022 to 84.6 in 2023, the state reported.

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