BEND, OR -- Fentanyl use in Central Oregon has sky-rocketed. Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel says fighting that drug problem will be a main challenge for long-serving Chief Deputy Steve Gunnels, who takes over as DA next week.

“The tragic issue with illicit fentanyl is it gets its way into other drugs, or sometimes there’s too much drug in a pill. If you’re buying it on the street, it might have 10 times the quantity, so you just think you’re taking one pill to get a buzz and you’re dead from an overdose,” says Hummel, who believes the county’s population growth is responsible for the rise in illegal drug use, along with the DA’s office handling more cases of theft, and impaired driving arrests.

Hummel tells KBND News the drug is so dangerous because users can’t be sure what quantity they are ingesting, “A kid might think ‘well I’m taking this opiate pill, I’ll take it like a pain pill, maybe it gives me a buzz’, and you’re dead from an overdose. So, we see unintentional overdose deaths from fentanyl are rising and we need to get a handle on that. And so that’s going to be a big challenge for Steve, local law enforcement, and local treatment providers to try to get a handle on that.”

Gunnels will be sworn in along with other newly-elected Deschutes County officials on Tuesday, January 3rd.