Fentanyl appears in cocaine in metro Denver

DENVER (KDVR) – Fentanyl appears in cocaine in and around the metro area, according to a local nonprofit public health group.

The group ‘DanceSafe Colorado‘promotes health and safety within the nightlife and electronic music communities along the Front Range.

The organization’s executive director said at least one person overdosed on fentanyl last week after ingesting it thinking it was cocaine.

“DanceSafe Colorado” sent an urgent PSA to Instagram after working with chemicals and substances labs in Denver.

Lab technicians and group members confirmed that fentanyl was indeed found in the cocaine of a man in the metro area after testing it.

In 2020, more than 500 people died in Colorado from overdoses associated with fentanyl.

In the Denver area, we typically see reports of fentanyl appearing in counterfeit opioids and benzodiazepines, which are usually not a stimulant like cocaine.

“We send out a lot of these fentanyl test strips that we use for drug testing to see if they have fentanyl in – and we do, we get a lot of emails from people saying, ‘hey, I’ have this bag that I thought was cocaine and I tested it and it had fentanyl in it, so I threw it out and you saved my life ‘- this is a very, very normal email in part of my daily workflow now, ”said Mitchell Gomez, executive director of Dance Colorado Sure.

When it comes to pure cocaine, without fentanyl, Colorado recorded 219 overdose deaths in 2020, up from 135 deaths in 2019.

As a non-profit organization, “DanceSafe Colorado” provides free drug testing kits at shows, concerts and events.

To find out more about the group, Click here.