mecklenburg Archives - Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina

‘I want them to understand the urgency’ | NC Gov. Stein on efforts to end fentanyl crisis

The proposed fentanyl control unit would include drug agents and prosecutors dedicated to investigating drug rings and stopping the flow of narcotics into the state.

Watch the original video and read the article on the WCNC website.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein was in Charlotte on Thursday to push for funding for a fentanyl control unit.

Stein was joined by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officials and people impacted by the fentanyl crisis during the news conference. People like Debbie Dalton.

“It took hardly a minute for my 6’3″, very healthy son to have a heart attack,” Dalton said, “That’s the thing with fentanyl. You don’t see it coming, but it’s coming. It’s relentless, and it’s killing our young people, and nobody is safe from it.”

Dalton lost her son, Hunter, in 2016. She has since worked to prevent other families from dealing with the same loss, and she says Stein’s effort is a part of that.

The proposed fentanyl control unit would include drug agents and prosecutors dedicated to investigating drug rings statewide. It would also be tasked with stopping the flow of narcotics into North Carolina communities.

Stein has been pushing for this unit since 2023 when he was the state’s attorney general. However, it’s never made it into the final state budget.

The same is true for this year’s Senate budget proposal, which did not include a fentanyl crisis unit.

“I encourage you to talk to the legislature,” Stein said. “The House is considering its budget as we speak, and so, it’s not a coincidence we’re having this discussion right now because I want them to understand the urgency.”

He said it would cost a couple million a year, which Stein said is fully within the General Assembly’s ability. The Senate’s budget plan did include funding for 10 additional prosecutors and five legal assistants for Mecklenburg County. If approved, it would mark the first significant increase in staffing for the DA’s office in nearly 15 years — a period during which the county’s population has grown by approximately 20%.

Stein said this is an important effort, but they still need more law enforcement resources focused on fentanyl.

“I want there to be more local prosecutors, but I just know how local ADAs are, and they are way overwhelmed,” Stein said. “These can be focused on the issue of fentanyl.”

At Thursday’s meeting, CMPD officials said it has received 600 overdose calls so far in 2025, an 11% increase from this time in 2024.

Contact Julie Kay at juliekay@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, X and Instagram.

Overdose deaths surge in Mecklenburg County

From 2019 through 2023, overdose deaths rose fastest among Black and Hispanic residents. County health officials said that in many instances, people died after using street drugs laced with fentanyl.

Read the original article on the QCityMetro website.

Fatal overdoses surged among Black and Hispanic residents in Mecklenburg County from 2019 through 2023, according to county data released on Thursday.

For each of the two groups, the drug-related death rate increased by 200% during that five-year window. For the county’s white population, the rate of fatal overdoses rose 14%.

Mecklenburg Health Director Raynard Washington called the trend “alarming.”

“These numbers are a stark reminder that the opioid epidemic is impacting every group in our community,” he said in a public statement on Thursday.

Why it matters: Despite a slight nationwide decline in recent years, drug overdoses remain the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18-44, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2023, more than 100,000 people died as a result of drug overdosing in the United States. Mecklenburg County recorded 356 overdose deaths in 2023, the last year for which county data were available.

What’s driving the surge?

In an interview with QCity Metro, Washington blamed the rise in overdose deaths on opioids and fentanyl, a synthetic drug that can be lethal in tiny doses. In many instances, he said, fentanyl is mixed with street drugs such as cocaine and counterfeit pills such as Adderall, Oxycodone and Percocet.

“Our illicit drugs are mostly tainted with substances that could kill you, and it doesn’t take multiple uses,” Washington said. “It takes one use.”

Washington said people share illegal pills, believing they are safe. “It’s best to get those from a pharmacist with a doctor’s prescription and not from a friend, a family member or someone in the community,” he said.

Dr. Thomas Owens, the Mecklenburg County medical examiner, said: “Almost every day we see the devastating burden of fentanyl in our community.”

What do the numbers tell us?

When it comes to race, Mecklenburg County has seen a seismic shift in overdose deaths.

As recently as 2019, white residents made up the bulk of Mecklenburg’s overdose deaths. In recent years, however, Black and Hispanic communities have seen the fastest growth rates for overdose deaths. (The death rate continues to grow for white residents as well.)

In 2019, for example, Black residents in Mecklenburg County died from overdosing at a rate of 14.99 people for every 100,000 Black residents. But just five years later, that number had surged to 44.34 overdose deaths for every 100,000 Black residents.

In his interview with QCity Metro, Washington said men accounted for a disproportionate number of overdose deaths in Mecklenburg County. Preliminary data for January showed that more than 65% of suspected fatal deaths in the county were male.

Hard-to-prove NC drug law leaves families of fentanyl victims chasing justice

Read the original article on the Charlotte Observer website.

Skateboard wheels skid in front of Sadie’s home, scraping, squeaking, then moving on. She paces between the porch rails, trying to peek at the face below the rider’s floppy hair.

Gwyneth Brown holds a photo of her son, Laird Ramirez, a 17-year-old Mecklenburg highschoolerwho died last July after taking a pressed pill that disguised fentanyl as a Percocet, his parents said. MELISSA MELVIN-RODRIGUEZ mrodriguez@charlotteobserver.com

Is it Laird? Looks like Laird. Sounds like him, too, Gwyneth Brown imagines Sadie, her panting, shedding German Shepherd, is thinking.

“I’m with Sadie on this one,” said Brown. “I’m still waiting for him to come home.”

The pair have been waiting more than a year for one of the skaters to kick up their board and walk up the front steps. They never do. It’s never Laird.

Laird Ramirez, a 17-year-old Mecklenburg highschooler, skateboarder and wrestler, died last July after taking a pressed pill that disguised fentanyl — a lethal synthetic opioid — as a Percocet, his parents said.

The Charlotte Observer reported a year ago on accounts from parents and students of how those $7 pills infiltrated Hough High School and how drug incidents inside Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools reached a 10-year high amidst Laird’s death.

Justice, Brown said, did not follow in his wake. While law enforcement and prosecutors say they’re aggressively going after people whose drugs lead to an overdose or fentanyl poisoning, some families say they haven’t seen that — and they’re searching for ways to cope once court dates pass.

Mecklenburg death by distribution cases

A man who was 21 in July 2023 was accused of selling Laird fentanyl and charged with death by distribution.

Brown says there was video footage of that drug deal. She says the drugs captured on camera killed her son. Half a pill was still in his wallet when police returned it to her.

Article continues on the Charlotte Observer website.

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Chinese money laundering operation deposited cartel money into Charlotte banks, feds say

CHARLOTTE — Feds are charging five Chinese nationals with money laundering after they say the suspects were part of a Chinese money-laundering operation that assisted drug trafficking operations by depositing drug money into Charlotte banks. In March, a grand jury indicted Enhua Fang, Shu Jun Zhen, Jianfei Lu, Maoxuan Xia, and Shao Neng Lin. The federal court documents were unsealed last week.

Seamus Hughes, a founder of the PACER monitoring newsletter Court Watch, first flagged the arrests.

Court documents claim the ringleader was Fang. The court documents claim Fang would receive requests from Mexican drug-trafficking organizations for bulk cash pickups in the United States. They say she would then send couriers to locations throughout the United States to collect the money and deposit it into bank accounts across the country. Once the money was in the bank, federal investigators say the funds would be laundered, including through cryptocurrency accounts. An extensive investigation by the DEA and IRS brought all this to light.

‘We are in the business of saving lives’ | NC leaders seeking solutions to the fentanyl crisis

State and local leaders held a press conference Wednesday to highlight strategies to mitigate the fentanyl epidemic in Mecklenburg County.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden, Attorney General Josh Stein and other federal, state, and Charlotte leaders are seeking solutions to the fentanyl crisis.

Sheriff McFadden hosted a press conference Wednesday at the Mecklenburg County Detention Center in order to highlight some of the work done to combat the rise in fentanyl-related deaths.

According to the United States Department of Justice, the number of fentanyl seizures in 2024 represents over 82 million deadly doses.

Around 10 people die in North Carolina every day because of fentanyl, according to Stein.

During the press conference, leaders discussed efforts by the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office to train staff members on administering Narcan. These efforts saved over a dozen lives this past year.

“People are dying from this drug thinking that they’re taking something simple, but it’s laced with fentanyl,” Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden said.

Also, in November of 2023, the Arrest Processing Center lobby received a Narcan vending machine, which is accessible to anyone. Additionally, Sheriff McFadden installed 39 Narcan alarm boxes that were placed in resident pods.

“Should Narcan be in schools? Absolutely. In every classroom? Absolutely. At every nightclub? Absolutely, why? Because we are in the business of saving lives,” Sheriff McFadden said.

CMS acknowledges teen drug use, will stock all public schools with Narcan

Narcan is the FDA-approved nasal form of naloxone for the emergency treatment of a known or suspected opioid overdose. News & Observer file photo

Teens and drugs. The phrase has long gone together, but, nowadays, each puff passed, pill crushed and line sniffed threatens death, not a shaking finger.

In response to the bleak reality students face — where deadly opioids like fentanyl are easy to get and even harder to escape — the overdose reversal drug naloxone will soon be stocked in every Charlotte public school.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education unanimously approved the plan Tuesday, which was the first time the district openly addressed the topic of drug use among students.

How to get Narcan, the drug used to reverse opioid overdoses, for free 24/7

It can save your life, and it’s free.

A vending machine stocked with free Narcan — a life-saving opioid reversal nasal spray — will now sit inside the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office, available for use 24/7.

The installment, tucked next to a Coca-Cola vending machine in the Detention Center’s lobby, comes after a 20% increase in fentanyl overdoses reported by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.

Fentanyl — an opioid often laced in other drugs, like pain pills, or distributed on its own — is 100 times more potent than morphine, and even a small amount of it can be deadly.

As it becomes easily available — routinely popping up in the detention center, on streets and even in schools — Sheriff Garry McFadden hopes to make access to Narcan as easy as possible.

“We want to encourage all people, whether they personally use substances or not, to carry the life-saving drug,” wrote MCSO Public Information Officer Bradley Smith.

Naloxone, the fast-acting medicine in Narcan that reverses an opioid overdose, is considered safe to use even if drug use is suspected but later found to not be the case. Earlier this year, federal regulators took action to make 4 mg Narcan nasal spray available over-the-counter without a prescription for about $50.

In collaboration with Carolinas CARE Partnership Rx ACE (CCP), McFadden said offering the drug will be “a pivotal step in our efforts to combat the ongoing fentanyl crisis.”