DEA issues warning about 'rainbow fentanyl' pills being used to target young Americans

WASHINGTON (TND) — The Drug Enforcement Administration is issuing a new warning about an alarming trend involving fentanyl and children.

Just last month, the DEA and its law enforcement partners seized rainbow-colored fentanyl pills. They’re highly addictive and can kill.

“Rainbow fentanyl—fentanyl pills and powder that come in a variety of bright colors, shapes, and sizes—is a deliberate effort by drug traffickers to drive addiction amongst kids and young adults,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a statement.

One mom knows first-hand the pain of losing a child to the dangerous drug. After two years, Rebecca Kiessling is still haunted by the last advice she gave her son Caleb.

You don't get a second chance. You don't get another life,” Kiessling said.

Days later, Kiessling lost not only Caleb but her other son Kyler as well.

“I don't get a second chance," said Kiessling. "It is a lot to live with."

The boys died together in a hotel room in Michigan in 2020 after ingesting fake Percocet pills that Kiessling says were 100% fentanyl.

My son Kyler had 11 times the amount that was enough to kill him in his system,” she said.

Fake prescription drugs laced with fentanyl are killing users and the new danger is fentanyl pills or power that look like candy sold in bright colors — some even resembling sidewalk chalk — targeted at kids.

“The precursor chemicals are coming from China directed in Mexico. Mexico is creating these super labs where they are making their own and lacing that,” said Mark Morgan, former Acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.

Just last July, fentanyl seizures were up 203%.

“We should not just be focused on how much we are seizing that gives us an indicator of the debt of the problem,” Morgan said. “The real issue is what we are not seizing.”

In 2021, fentanyl was involved in more than 77% of adolescent overdose deaths.

“The men and women of the DEA are relentlessly working to stop the trafficking of rainbow fentanyl and defeat the Mexican drug cartels that are responsible for the vast majority of the fentanyl that is being trafficked in the United States,"Milgram's statement continued.

Kiessling lost her sons in 2020 and since then, she says every day is a battle.

I Iook at their friends and their friends are living their lives,” Kiessling said. “I see two see years later what they are doing with their lives and I grieve so much. Caleb’s friends are graduating and I think, ‘why can't that can't be my boys?’”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2021 with 66% of those deaths related to synthetic opioids like fentanyl.