Dallas, Texas (KTRK) – “Oh, Alison,” Depp Scroggins said. “Alison was a beautiful girl inside and out.”
Scroggins says her daughter Alison was in the prime of her life and studying to be a paralegal. But she says on March 18, 2020, while celebrating with friends on St. Patrick’s Day, her daughter took what she thought was oxycodone. Alison Scroggins went to sleep and never woke up.
“We had to bury our daughter, and we didn’t really know what had happened,” Scroggins said.
Six months later, tests proved that the pill Allison took was full of fentanyl.
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, fentanyl has turned out to be the most deadly drug on our streets. It is now the number one cause of death among Americans ages 18 to 45, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Eyewitness News went to Dallas for a rare look inside the DEA’s operation to fight the fentanyl crisis and discovered that the problem in Houston was getting worse.
The chemists were hard at work in the DEA lab, testing all kinds of drugs. This lab, covering Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, showed us a vault full of caskets and evidence boxes.
“So chemists open their evidence here and do various useful tests to determine exactly what the evidence might contain, then they make reports and then you go to court,” said Jimmy Vazquez, director of the lab.
Vazquez showed us what’s coming from Houston.
“The predominant drug we see is methamphetamine, followed by cocaine, then fentanyl, then heroin. So from just last year to this year, we are now receiving perhaps 20% of the evidence we take that it is suspected fentanyl, whereas that was last year,” Vasquez said. Only about 4%.” “Houston’s fentanyl dispatch has gone from 4% maybe to more than 12% now.”
We saw the confiscation of two kilograms of fentanyl. That’s enough to kill a million Houstonians, Vasquez said. She told us that most of Houston’s fentanyl is in pill form.
Investigators use the term “fentanyl poisoning” more these days than overdose, because most victims think they’re taking something else, not knowing the pill is full of the deadly fentanyl.
“Young people are supposed to learn from their mistakes, not die from their mistakes,” Scroggins said.
Unfortunately, many Houston families suffer the same loss.
According to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Science, deaths involving fentanyl in Harris County from 2019 to 2021 increased from 104 to 459, an increase of nearly 340%. The DEA says four out of 10 pills on the streets of Houston right now are filled with a lethal amount of fentanyl, and agents fear it will only get worse.
“Unfortunately, we are in big trouble right now. Mexican drug cartels are flooding the market with this fentanyl, causing numerous overdoses and poisoning on a daily basis in Harris County,” Daniel Cuomo, the DEA special agent responsible for Houston, said of the split. “This property here, it’s all over the place. It’s not one area. This property doesn’t discriminate, socioeconomically, or race or location. This is all over Houston.”
Team Cuomo just launched an anti-fentanyl task force.
“We will start from the individual who sold it, to the victim, and we will go back to the source of supply. We will try to put everyone in that row, in that chain in jail,” he said.
Dealers are also tracking tablet presses in our area. The task force is currently investigating 15 fentanyl-related deaths.
Back in the DEA lab, the staff here changed the priority of seizures due to several deaths. Cases of fentanyl now go straight to the top.
“Once the fentanyl exhibits come in, they are rotated in a week or two, and everything else should be prioritized based on that,” Vakes said.
This is good news for the families of the victims.
Depp Scroggins travels to Washington for a private fentanyl summit where she meets other families just as torn as hers. She visited the “Faces of Fentanyl” wall.
Her daughter’s photo ranges between 15 and 27 years old. Scroggins is now dedicated to raising awareness and not letting her daughter’s death go to waste.
“Our family will never be the same,” Scroggins said. “This has to stop happening. I don’t want this to happen to any other families. Unfortunately, it will.”
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