Thanks for your editorial, “It takes a village to combat … fentanyl use.” (“In Our View,” The Columbian, Jan. 26). My only comments are that the editorial was too long and that it failed to label fentanyl as what it truly is: “poison.”
The best advice in the editorial came from Dr. Alan Melnick, Clark County’s public health director: “Anyone who uses powdered drugs or takes pills that were not given to them by a pharmacy should assume they contain fentanyl. Drugs purchased online, from friends, or from regular dealers could be deadly. There’s no way to know how much fentanyl is in a drug or if it’s evenly distributed throughout the batch.”
No matter the product name used by the seller, or the price, drug buyers of all ages should be very cautious when buying powdered drugs, pills, etc., from anybody who is not a licensed pharmacist.
I am a retired engineer who worked (as a stock boy for everything but the drugs) in a Lakewood pharmacy during high school. I decided engineering college had to be a lot easier than studying pharmacy.