Metro Police are warning that dangerous fentanyl is showing up in all kinds of street drugs, but especially cocaine that’s sold in downtown Nashville.
Sgt. Mike Hotz with the special investigations division told the Metro Council Tuesday night that “there are no safe drugs nowadays.”
Aside from counterfeit cocaine, cheap and potent fentanyl is also being pressed into pills that look like prescription Xanax and oxycodone that fetch a high price on the street.
“I cannot overestimate this: The amount that is on the streets of our city is shocking and frightening,” Hotz said.
Hotz encouraged all downtown business owners to start keeping the overdose reversal drug naloxone in order to save lives.
In the first quarter of the year, Davidson County tracked 173 suspected overdose deaths, even higher than the start to 2021, which was a record year. The city also tracks overdose responses from the Nashville Fire Department. In the week of July 10, there were an average of 18 overdose calls a day.