Placer County sheriff warns of Oxycontin pills laced with fentanyl after arrest

Placer County sheriff’s deputies urged caution Thursday after they received test results that showed prescription Oxycontin pills seized in June were laced with fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid.

On June 18, deputies arrested Alijah Edmond Dabney, 20, of Sacramento on a no-bail warrant for burglary and found 1,000 pills in his possession. Law enforcement identified the pills as 30-milligram tablets of Oxycontin and sent them to a lab to be tested.

Deputies recently received the results of the test, which showed the pills to be laced with fentanyl, which is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, the sheriff’s office said.

“Synthetic opioids such as fentanyl are considered to be the most common drugs involved in drug overdose deaths in the United States,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release. “There have been 14 fentanyl overdose deaths in Placer County since January 2020.”

“If you don’t have a prescription from your doctor for opioids, please DO NOT buy them off the street!,” the sheriff’s office said. “Often times, ‘prescription’ opioids are laced with chemicals including fentanyl. It’s just not worth risking your life.”