By Emilee White
In October 2022, a former employee of the Los Angeles Angels Eric Kay was convicted and sentenced to 22 years in prison after it was found he gave pitcher Tyler Skaggs drugs — fentanyl and oxycodone — that lead to his overdose and death.
A few years ago, while on the road for a four-game series against the Texas Rangers, Skaggs was found dead in his hotel room, having choked on his own vomit due to mixing alcohol and drugs, the same drugs Kay provided. It was later confirmed that Kay would also provide oxycodone pills to other Angels players throughout the years. Even though justice was served, Skaggs’ life was just another life claimed by the fentanyl crisis in the United States, and with over 850,000 lives claimed in the last 20 years due to overdosing as reported by the CDC, it doesn’t look to be getting better any time soon.
“Fentanyl is the single deadliest drug threat our nation has ever encountered,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. “Fentanyl is everywhere. From large metropolitan areas to rural America, no community is safe from this poison. We must take every opportunity to spread the word to prevent fentanyl-related overdose deaths and poisonings from claiming scores of American lives every day.”
But what is Fentanyl and why is it so deadly, yet so common? Classified as a narcotic by the DEA, Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. Fentanyl was first developed to relieve pain for cancer patients that was meant to be absorbed through the skin. But like any other pain killer, people began to abuse the opioid properties of fentanyl by adding it to other illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine to increase the effects. After so many reported “accidental” overdoses, however, it seemed that fentanyl was being used at a higher amount than previously thought.
According to the National Forensic Laboratory Information System, fentanyl reports increased from 5,400 to over 56,500 between 2014 and 2017, and the CDC reported over 150 people die each day of fentanyl-induced overdoses. Like in Skaggs’ case, fentanyl was being added to oxycodone pills along with other drugs to create more of the drug to sell, which means a lot of people were unknowingly using this illicit drug. And because of fentanyl’s high potency, people were overdosing on drugs, even in small quantities, that they never have had an issue with before.
Although Skaggs’ death was ruled as an accident, it was also concluded that he would have survived had he not consumed fentanyl, or even come into contact with Kay, a known substance abuser who took advantage of players seeking help for pain management during their demanding 162-game seasons. Due to this negligence, a current lawsuit is underway — a judge just recently denied a motion to dismiss the case — to determine whether the Angels organization knew of Kay’s involvement in supplying drugs to the players. Will this stop fentanyl from spreading? Will this stop drug overdoses? Probably not, but it’s a step in the right direction to protect people from the deadly drug.
Photo Credit: Keith Allison
