HOUSTON — On Friday, Harris County’s district attorney and agents with the local Drug Enforcement Administration said their task force targeting fentanyl dealers has taken more than a dozen alleged dealers off the streets.
Since launching the task force in early 2023, it’s led to 14 cases involving overdose deaths being prosecuted, with the youngest victim just 14 years old.
Daniel Comeaux, Special Agent in Charge of the DEA’s Houston Field Division, said seizures are up in 2024, with over 1 million lethal doses of the synthetic opioid seized by the Houston field office.
“Fentanyl right now continues to be the biggest threat in our country,” said Comeaux during a news conference Friday afternoon.
Experts said fentanyl is nearly impossible to detect.
“You have individuals who think they’re taking an Adderall to study longer for an exam possibly,” said Comeaux. “Instead, they get a pill that’s laced with fentanyl, and they die immediately.”
This task force goes after the dealers whose drugs kill.
Thanks to a law that took effect September 1, prosecutors can charge them with first-degree murder, which carries a penalty of five to 99 years in prison.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said two of the task force’s fourteen cases involving deadly fentanyl overdoses were filed since the new law’s implementation.
“Taking drugs is not a death penalty offense, and it shouldn’t be,” said Kim Ogg, Harris County District Attorney. “We’re seeing people die by the hundreds, even the thousands.”
One of the cases the task force has prosecuted is against a man prosecutors say sold the pill that killed Honor Wallace, 25, of Houston, in July 2022.
“Losing a child is the most difficult thing somebody can go through,” said her father, Barry Wallace. “I don’t want anyone to have to go through what we’re going through.”
Wallace urged parents to talk with their kids.
“I would be very frank with kids if I was parents and not sugar coat it and just say, ‘If you don’t listen to me, you might die,’” Wallace said.
The DA’s office has two full-time prosecutors on the task force and a third working part-time. Ogg said she intends to add more when funding becomes available.
Ogg says her office also has a border prosecutor to go after the fentanyl deliveries coming from Mexico.