They got a pink packet of artificial sweetener, a paper plate and a playing card.

After dumping the powder onto the plate, they used the card to “cut” the pile in half.

Then they cut that in half.

Then that in half.

Several more piles were cut in half.

Eventually, they ended up with a few grains that represented 2.8 milligrams of fentanyl.

“What you had on your plate, that gram of NutriSweet, that’s about a gram,” McLaren said. “What you have now is about 2.8 milligrams. That’s a lethal overdose.”

McLaren shared the podium with Webster County Sheriff’s Sgt. Luke Fleener.

Fleener had some bad news for Sheryl Griffith, of Fort Dodge, who had just finished cutting her powder like a drug dealer would cut it.

“They’re going to be that precise, right?” she asked.

“No, they’re not,” Fleener said.

Then he explained how their mindset works.

“I’ve interviewed dealers who basically say, ‘I don’t care how many die as long as they pay me before they die.'”

Lab-grade scales are not part of their gear.

“What kind of instrument do they use?” an audience member asked.

“They don’t,” Fleener said. “Their instrument is: ‘that looks like it’s enough.'”

A March 3 incident drove home the point that opioids are dangerous when a Fort Dodge police officer had to be treated with the anti-opioid medication Narcan after he was exposed to a substance suspected to be fentanyl.

So why did the suspect, under arrest, not suffer the same symptoms as the officer?

“In our setting we have no tolerance built up to it,” Fleener said. “Their tolerance can be quite high.”

The officers showed the body camera video of the incident.

“For me,” McLaren said, “it’s terrifying.”

•

Opioid use and abuse locally is a mix of good and bad news.

Fleener said most of the drug arrests locally are for methamphetamine, but he expects the opioids to arrive eventually.

“It’s slowly making its way across the state from Chicago,” he said. “It’s something we are going to have to deal with.”

Many opioid users are individuals who get addicted when they’re prescribed the pain medicine for a legitimate injury. Opioids quickly produce tolerance and once the prescription runs out, many users find themselves in withdrawal.

“The withdrawal symptoms are really awful,” Fleener said.

Taken to its conclusion, the addicted user can eventually end up turning to heroin instead of trying to obtain prescription medication.

“I can buy a gram of heroin and achieve the same thing for a couple of days,” Fleener said.

•

Fentanyl comes into the picture as an additive to other drugs. The powerful opioid gives those other drugs an extra “kick.”

“It’s now being mass produced and brought into the U.S.,” Fleener said. “We see it in street drugs laced with fentanyl. For the dealers, it’s ‘lace that with fentanyl.’ It’s gold to them.”

McLaren said local law enforcement hopes to take a different approach to the problem.

“We’re trying to be more proactive to stop it,” he said. “Me putting these people in jail over and over isn’t solving the problem. Jails are not equipped to deal with the medical issues that come with this. Jail, it just doesn’t work.”

•

That’s where people like Ben Rasmussen, a prevention specialist at Community and Family Resources come in.

He works on prevention presentations for schools and other organizations and also conducts Narcan training.

He explained how the tolerance builds up.

“Opioids cover up your pain receptors,” Rasmussen said. “Your brain being the wonderful thing it is, it adds more pain receptors, that’s part of what drives tolerance. When someone goes into withdrawal, all of a sudden they have all these extra pain receptors.”

The need to find the means to pay for those opioids and other drugs is often the engine that powers burglaries and other thefts.

“It’s definitely driven by illegal drugs,” Fleener said. “When we go in to execute a search warrant we frequently find stacks and stacks of stolen property.”

On Thursday, after the presentation, Griffith was left to contemplate her tiny pile of artificial sweetener.

“The size of an overdose is amazing,” she said.

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