Dartmouth Police Warn of Potential for Fentanyl in Halloween Candy

While area police chiefs say rainbow fentanyl has yet to show up around these parts, they are urging parents to be on the lookout for it and educate themselves about the deadly drug.

The warning comes after police in Connecticut charged two Maryland men with trafficking thousands of fentanyl pills into the state in Nerds boxes and Skittles bags.

With Halloween just around the corner, local authorities are worried.

Former federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) special operations director Derek Maltz told Fox News the brightly-colored "rainbow fentanyl" is being marketed to children.

"We're seeing an unprecedented amount of kids dying as young as 13 years old, and we know now, the DEA says that 40 percent of the pills contain a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl," Maltz said. "We're losing a future generation – 300 a day."

He called it "a mass poisoning."

Dartmouth Police Chief Brian Levesque said while it hasn't arrived yet in Dartmouth, he wants the public to be educated about it.

"Though we have not yet seen this particular version of fentanyl in Dartmouth, we not only want to make citizens aware of its existence but also urge them to continue to educate themselves about the dangers associated with either handling it or using it," he said.

"With Halloween fastly approaching, we strongly recommend that parents take time to sort through the candy that their children bring home," Levesque said.

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Police Chief Paul Oliveira recently told me that rainbow fentanyl has yet to surface in New Bedford, but like Chief Levesque, he is urging parents to be cautious.

Fox reported that "the U.S. saw synthetic opioid deaths increase from 6,000 in 2015 to more than 63,000 in 2021, with fentanyl being the biggest contributing factor."