FL: Rural Florida county shocked by fentanyl deaths over holiday

In addition to the nine deaths over the holiday weekend, another nine people were treated for suspected fentanyl overdoses.

A small, largely rural county west of Florida’s capital experienced an unheard-of spike in deadly drug overdoses believed to be caused by fentanyl over the July 4 weekend, with nine people dying in the latest sign that a national crisis is becoming even more far-reaching.

In all of 2021, Gadsden County had just 10 overdoses, Sheriff Morris Young said. He couldn’t recall any being fatal. The state had even rejected a grant application to treat fentanyl overdoses because the county of about 43,700 people couldn’t definitively identify any cases involving the powerful synthetic opioid.

Then last Friday, calls to emergency services began flooding in. In addition to the nine deaths over the holiday weekend, another nine people were treated for suspected fentanyl overdoses.

“It’s shaken the entire community. I feel their pain,” Young said Wednesday. “I’m really treating this like we had a hurricane coming into town. It means that much to me that we could lose people in such a short period of time.”