PHOENIX — Fentanyl — it's becoming more deadly, more dangerous, and more common on Valley streets.
"We see it way more than any other drug that we test," explains Roger Schneider, who works in the Phoenix Police Department's crime lab.
Schneider has spent more than three decades working in Arizona crime labs, first with the Arizona Department of Public Safety and now with Phoenix PD.
We interviewed him recently inside a training lab that Phoenix PD uses. Schneider tells us he's never seen this much fentanyl before. In fact, this year is on pace to be another record-breaking year.
"We started seeing the counterfeit oxycodone pills that contained fentanyl starting in 2016 and it went from 40-something in 2017 to last year we had 4,600 identifications made and we are on pace to go over 5,000 IDs this year," explains Schneider.
In fact, in 2021, more than half of all drug cases Phoenix police worked involved fentanyl, according to the department.
"If you're making fentanyl, it's a fully synthetic drug. All you need is a lab and you can be making quantities of fentanyl every week that you can then put into tablets and distribute. It's a bigger moneymaker."
But money isn't the only factor - many dealers have turned to fentanyl out of convenience.
"A bag of tablets about the size of my fist…that's 1,000 pills. You get a lot more tablets per area you're talking about. They're very portable."
"I used to see mostly meth and heroin," explains Phoenix Police Officer Kenneth Silvia, who works in the department's Neighborhood Enforcement Team. "Drugs like that were most common. It's almost exclusively fentanyl we are coming across [now]."
"How does that make you feel knowing you're taking some of the most dangerous drugs around, off the streets?" ABC15's Nick Ciletti asked.
"Feels good it's rewarding when you get a large amount knowing it won't be in the hands of people that could potentially OD," Officer Silvia said.
As far as rainbow fentanyl is concerned, Phoenix police tell ABC15 they don't have exact counts of how many multi-colored fentanyl pills have been confiscated this year. We're told the overwhelming majority of fentanyl pills that are found by police are the blue-colored variety that has been around for several years. Still, police warn it's important for parents to be on top of the latest trends, especially since rainbow fentanyl easily resembles candy and could be more appealing to kids.
