Perspective: Countering Colorado’s opioid crisis

The opioid crisis remains one of the most pressing issues facing our nation and Colorado. While we are making significant progress in confronting and mitigating the problem, opioid trafficking and addiction continues to impact families and communities in every corner of our state.

The problem has its roots in overprescription of medical opioids decades ago. People seeking relief from pain — whether from a medical condition, injury or surgery — would be prescribed opioids to manage that pain, and some would become addicted. Eventually they would seek more potent forms, and over time the problem morphed from one of overprescription and subsequent “doctor-shopping” for legitimate medications, into an organized, sophisticated criminal enterprise.

The scope and impact of the crisis is hard to overstate. Two milligrams of fentanyl, which has replaced heroin as the opioid of choice, is considered a lethal dose: in 2023, the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Rocky Mountain Field Division seized over 425 kilograms of illicit fentanyl. Some of this is pressed into counterfeit pills; some is mixed in with other street drugs, often ingested without the user knowing it was there.