DENVER (KDVR) — The Drug Enforcement Administration’s Rocky Mountain Field Division said it seized around 20% of 2023’s total fentanyl pills in one week.

On Thursday, the DEA shared a release about the 570,000 fake fentanyl pills it seized in one week this month. According to the DEA, 2.62 million fentanyl pills were seized in Colorado in 2023 — a record.

Over that week, DEA agents and members of state and local law enforcement intercepted three separate shipments of pills; 170,000 pills on June 7, 300,000 pills on June 13 and 100,000 pills on June 14. Laboratory testing has found that seven out of every 10 pills seized by the DEA contains a deadly dose of fentanyl.

“The total number of pills seized so far this month proves the Mexican drug cartels are not
slowing down production and distribution of this poison as we head into the summer months,”
said DEA RMFD Special Agent in Charge Jonathan Pullen. “Every day the men and women of
DEA and our partner agencies are working hard to get fake fentanyl pills of the streets.”

The DEA also said Colorado is “easily” on pace to break 2023’s seizure record.

While the DEA did not say where the shipments were intercepted, the investigations are ongoing.

Common Sense Institute: Fentanyl is costing Colorado

The Common Sense Insitute, a Denver independent think-tank, released a study on Tuesday that reported the total cost of fentanyl deaths in Colorado was $16 billion last year. That’s up from $1.3 billion in 2017.

DJ Summers, director of Policy and Research at CSI, said that the DEA 425.6 kilograms of fentanyl in 2023.

“Enough fentanyl to kill every Coloradan 36 times,” Summers said.

Officials say those drugs contributed to more than 1,200 fentanyl overdoses in the state in that same year.

“That is more than there were murder victims in 2021, 2022 and 2023 combined,” Summers told FOX31’s Nate Belt.

He said on top of the rising death toll, the ongoing crisis is costing taxpayer dollars at a staggering rate.

“All of the people who died of a fentanyl overdose in 2023, you take all those costs up and it’s $16 billion. That’s how much is being taken out of the economy,” Summers said.

That’s the economic impact lost and more money spent every year to fight the fentanyl crisis.

“It costs a lot of money just to keep on top of all of this in a proactive enough way that more people don’t die.”

Summers says it’s often hard for people to connect with an issue they may not realize is impacting them, so he hopes CSI’s new report sheds light on the growing issue.

“It does not go away simply by turning a blind eye to it, by hoping that it only impacts people in the farther corners of society,” Summers said.