Utah
How a Utah company changed the game in fighting illegal opioid scourge
SALT LAKE CITY — The Drug Enforcement Administration says more than 388 million lethal doses of fentanyl were seized in 2023.
It poses a question: What happens to all those drugs?
It gets destroyed and the Utah-based company NarcX provides a safe and immediate drug disposal option.
David Schiller has 30 years of experience under his belt with the DEA, making him familiar with the opioid epidemic and fentanyl crisis.
Schiller said statistics show approximately 300 people every day die from an opioid overdose in the United States.
Those opioids come illegally from drug dealers and other countries as well as medical cabinets.
Drugs like Narcan can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose but Schiller said many illegal drugs are so strong that the effects are more than Narcan alone can handle.
The DEA’s National Prescription Drug Take Back Day to take place Saturday
Drug take-back programs have given people a place to take unused or unneeded drugs out of their medicine cabinets and drop them off at safe disposal sites.
The take-back programs are a great success but Schiller said they have a weak spot.
“You have to stockpile your medication inside your home for six months at a time,” he said. “While it’s being stockpiled with good intent, it’s being diverted. People are becoming addicted. And they’re dying.”
That’s where NarcX comes into play.
NarcX is a liquid solution that neutralizes the drugs in moments.
If ingested, the liquid will make a person sick.
This method enables safe and eco-friendly onsite destruction of drugs, including fentanyl, and helps prevent overdoses by keeping the drugs off the streets.
It has taken off in Riverton, Payson, Provo and soon in American Fork.
“I would routinely have moms and dads and young adults say, ‘We’ve had this medication. We know the side effects and we don’t know what to do. We want to do the right thing,’” Schiller added. “Now they’re saying, ‘Thank god there’s NarcX, where we can either take it to a reciprocal and get rid of it instantaneously, and it cannot be diverted, or there’s containers we can use in our household.’ So, it’s a legacy. It’s a game changer.”
SOUTH SALT LAKE, Utah (KUTV) — An AMBER Alert was canceled after being issued for a 9-year-old boy out of South Salt Lake.
Marie Erika Lynn Marsh, 33, was accused of abducting a 9-year-old non-family member.
The alert was issued at 5:38 p.m. It was canceled just after 6 p.m.
An AMBER Alert was issued for Raymond Vigil, a 9-year-old boy abducted by Marie Erika Lynn Marsh, a 33-year-old non-family member. (Photo: AMBER Alert)
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SALT LAKE CITY — More fire restrictions are being added in Utah despite some recent help in its drought situation.
The Bureau of Land Management is reinstating Stage 1 fire restrictions on land it manages in Juab and Millard counties on Friday. State land managers issued a similar order for Juab and Sanpete counties, which applies to state lands and unincorporated private lands in the county.
It prohibits building or maintaining any open fire or campfires using solid fuels or any ash-producing fuel in the section of central Utah, except for fire rings or grills at developed campgrounds or day-use areas on public state lands that have a pressurized running water system.
Open fires are also permitted at permanently constructed fire pits at private residences, as long as they have a pressurized water system.
The order also bans any smoking except within a vehicle or enclosed area, as well as grinding, cutting or welding of metal, or operating or using any internal combustion engine without a spark-arresting device. Violation can result in fines, restitution fees and even jail time.
It matches several other Stage 1 restrictions already in place across the state. Most of the restrictions are located in southwest Utah, but recent restrictions have crept up into central Utah and parts of the Wasatch region, too.
Utah Fire Info maintains a list of active fire restrictions in the state.
Both new orders were signed amid some encouraging signs in Utah’s drought situation this week. The amount of extreme drought in the state dropped from 60% last week to 43% this week, the U.S. Drought Monitor reported earlier Thursday. Most of the improvement came in other parts of central Utah.
However, nearly 95% of the state remains in at least severe drought, and all other parts of the state remain in at least moderate drought. That means it’s still plenty dry for new fires.
Close to 250 different fires have been reported across the state this year, burning over 12,000 acres of land. The entire state is currently listed as having above-normal fire potential as well, according to the National Interagency Coordination Center.
“As fire danger continues to increase across the region, fire managers are asking the public to use caution with any activity that could spark a wildfire,” said Kayli Guild, fire prevention and communications coordinator for the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
Fox News senior correspondent Alicia Acuna has the latest on two former Utah court clerks charged with harboring illegal aliens on ‘Special Report.’
Jennifer Joma and Lauren Moro, former Utah court clerks, plead not guilty to felony obstruction charges for aiding illegal immigrants. Federal prosecutors allege the clerks improperly accessed databases to identify undocumented individuals, then guided them out the courthouse’s back door to evade ICE agents. A trial is set for August.
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