The Mexican drug cartels have been taking advantage of our porous Southern border to not only bring meth into Montana, but to also bring fentanyl into Big Sky Country. And it's only getting worse, according to Montana's Attorney General Austin Knudsen.

AG Knudsen has been meeting with sheriffs and chiefs of police all across the state this past week.

AG Knudsen: Fentanyl was a small problem even just a couple of years ago. Folks, this is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Methamphetamine is still the drug of choice in Montana, but we are seeing more and more fentanyl. This stuff is terrifying. It is deadly. It's a synthetic opioid. It's manufactured either by the drug cartels in Mexico or in China and brought in here illicitly. The problem is, they're smuggling it in here in pill form or in tablet form, and they're mixing it with all kinds of other garbage. It's never consistent. And we're getting a lot of overdose deaths all across Montana because this stuff is so dangerous.

Even just a speck of fentanyl can be deadly for first responders and others who come in contact with it. Knudsen says he is working to get Narcan out to officers across the state to assist with the rise in overdoses from fentanyl.

AG Knudsen: I was just talking with the sheriff in Havre yesterday and the police chief in Havre yesterday. They had some people who were transporting fentanyl pills. They got pulled over and they decided to hide the evidence by eating all the fentanyl pills. Everybody coded and they had to be revived with Narcan.

Full audio below.

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