Last Thursday night during a traffic stop on Mount Olive Drive near Alex Benton Road in the Newton Grove area, a 27-year-old Fayetteville man was arrested and charged with a laundry list of drug offenses, the most significant of which involved trafficking and possessing a half-pound of a substance believed to be fentanyl.
Sadly, Newton Grove’s police chief wasn’t all that surprised by the arrest or the amount of the drug confiscated, saying “Highway 13 is a thoroughfare for drug trafficking between Goldsboro and Fayetteville. We see it often through here.”
Even sadder is the reality of his words.
Drugs make their way into and through Sampson County along U.S. highways and interstates frequently, sometimes landing within our boundaries and winding up in the hands of our residents, addicting some, providing a continued high for others, leading to overdoses and even death.
This arrest isn’t a first for our county and, unfortunately, it likely won’t be a last. Instead it is merely another in a continued effort to meet the demand for — and, thus, the supply of — illegal substances that become the catalyst for so many of the other crimes experienced here in our county.
It is also a reminder that we, as citizens of Sampson County, cannot and should not leave our heads buried in the sand, ignoring the drug problems that continue to exist here.
Fentanyl is a highly potent opioid primarily used as a pain medication. It is 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin and 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine and, depending on the method of delivery, can be very fast acting. Even ingesting a relatively small quantity can cause overdose.
Because of fentanyl’s potency, sources tell us that the half pound of the drug confiscated here last week could have killed up to 100,000 people. Let that sink in for a minute.
Taken together, the fact that Sampson roadways are often the means to transport drugs and the truth of substance abuse that exists here in our midst, last week’s arrest should be cold water in our faces, waking us to the stark reality that we often forget or simply don’t want to acknowledge — we do have a drug problem here.
Years ago, community leaders worked tirelessly to educate the public on the realities of drug abuse, mapping out productive ways to bring about positive change and to get needed help to those who often were left stranded and floundering in their own abuse. Back then the strongest of the drugs included cocaine, heroin and meth, all dangerous and, sometimes, deadly substances, but nothing like fentanyl.
We are certain work continues in some corners of the county, albeit far quieter than in years past, but more should be done.
Will it prevent drugs from being transported through our county? Likely not. But it might ensure that at least some of the drugs that land here will be refused by people, young and old, who have been awakened to just how dangerous and deadly these substances are.
Drug arrests happen all the time; drugs in differing amounts are seized quite often. Both are good things.
But when a half pound of one of the most dangerous substances known to exist lands in Sampson, it should nudge us from our apathy, understanding that while the impact of drug abuse might not be in our back yard today, it could be tomorrow.