Galveston's fentanyl news conference was the right approach

Tuesday’s news conference, at which top police department officials and agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spoke, was a great improvement.

The impetus of the news conference was to announce that Patrick Miller, 23, had been charged with two counts of manufacturing and delivering a controlled substance and held in the Galveston County Jail on $200,000 in bonds.

Miller is suspected of selling the drugs that caused the deaths of Vadim Birca, 31, and Dimitrije Gudovski, 34, on Christmas Day, law officers said at the news conference.

Although Miller, like everyone charged with a crime, should be considered innocent unless and until the state proves otherwise, we can hope investigators were correct and have made great progress toward shutting down part of a deadly trade.

News of the arrest was important, but also was secondary to the public safety messages law enforcement officers made at that news conference.

Law officers displayed a plastic bag marked with panda logos and issued a warning that drugs packaged that way likely are tainted with deadly fentanyl.

“This particular baggie has a picture of a panda, which is harmless,” Galveston Police Sgt. Derek Gaspard said. “But it’s a specific bag that the community needs to be aware of.

“If you see a bag that looks like this, there’s a good chance there may be fentanyl in it. If you see something like this, contact your local police department.”

Galveston Police Chief Doug Balli urged people inclined to try street drugs to consider how much faith they were putting in a drug dealer.

“You are putting your life in their hands,” Balli said.

That’s not hyperbole.

During 2021 and the first 11 months 2022, there were 138 drug overdose related deaths in Galveston County, including the deaths of Birca and Gudovski, according to statistics from the Galveston County Medical Examiner’s office.

More than 56 percent of the deaths were linked to fentanyl, according to those statistics.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that’s cheap to make, easy to transport and exponentially more powerful and potentially more lethal than morphine and heroin, according to numerous sources.

Just 2 milligrams of fentanyl is all it takes for a fatal overdose, Daniel Comeaux, special agent in charge of the investigation at the Drug Enforcement Agency Houston field division, said.

Most drugs laced with fentanyl are being smuggled into the United States by Mexican cartels, Comeaux said.

“What everyone needs to know is that drug cartels don’t care,” Comeaux said. “They’re all about the dollar bill. Right now, we have these counterfeit pills that look like Oxycontin or Xanax; people are taking something they think might be giving them a high for 30 minutes to an hour, but these pills can put you to sleep for the rest of your life.”

After Tuesday’s news conference, no one should still be ignorant of the fact that fentanyl is everywhere in the street drug trade.

It’s not just in baggies marked with pandas, but perhaps in that pill you think is Adderall and plan to take before you study for that big test.

It might be in that pill you think is Xanax and plan to take because you feel anxiety.

It might be in that pill you think is Oxycontin and plan to take because you have real physical pain.

Over the past week or so, we’ve heard from law enforcement officers, health officials, relatives of the dead and recovering opioid addicts who all said the same thing.

It’s a bad time to trust with your life anything you got through the illegal drug trade or from anybody in that trade.

It’s a good time to seek help.

• Michael A. Smith