Haunting video shows terrifying drug trend

A heartbreaking video interview with a young woman has highlighted a terrifying new drug trend that is ruining lives.

A heartbreaking interview with a homeless young woman has highlighted a terrifying and deadly new drug trend that is ruining lives and sweeping across the US.

Monique, 20, from Arizona was asked about how she ended up living on the streets of Phoenix after she growing up in a small town in the nation’s southwest.

In the video that has been viewed more than 144,000 times, she said she became addicted to a drug known in the US as ‘blues’ four years ago when she was living in a small town north of Phoenix called Winslow.

‘Blues’ is the name given to counterfeit pills made to look like prescription oxycodone. They are often laced with fentanyl, a drug that’s 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine, leading to addiction and death.

“So the blues are in the small little towns like Winslow?” the interviewer from Poverty on the Streets asks Monique.

“Yeah. Long time ago. Yeah,” she says. “It’s still there.”

Monique said she was introduced to the life-destroying drug by her ex-boyfriend and tried to get clean on two occasions.

Twenty-year-old Monique from Arizona. Picture: TikTok

“I’ve been in treatment but I just got high after I left,” she said. “I got clean by myself because my ex had went to prison and I don’t know I just felt bad knowing that, like, he had to do that and I was still gonna get high.

“So I got a job and got clean for a year and five or six months and then just got involved with the wrong people again, you know?”

She said she used to take up to 100 blues pills a day, but that now she was trying to put her money to better use.

Monique then admitted she still used “around 10 or 20 a day”.

The interviewer said he had heard similar accounts from people in Phoenix who had taken more than 150 pills in a day, and the only reason they didn’t take more is because they didn’t have any more money.

Monique said this was common in the circles she had hung around in.

“You have a whole 24 hours,” she said. “Yeah, we get high and fall but we still be up all night. So, I took a whole pack (of 100 pills) in a day.”

The interviewer then asked if she was using the drugs to deal with pain and trauma — which led her to make a heartbreakingly honest admission.

She said she just took the pills because she was “bored”. Picture: TikTok

She said she is looking to get treatment. Picture: TikTok

“I have trauma and stuff, but honestly, even when I’m sober I’ve learned to accept what happened to me,” she said. “So like high or sober, it doesn’t affect me. I‘ve been to the point where I just like move on with my life and I change things.

“But I get high, honestly, just because there’s like nothing else to do out here.

“I’m bored. I’m not depressed when I’m sober. I’m always like, things in the past don’t affect me now.

“It does help when you’re stressed out but I like to get high for the feeling mostly.

“It does hide a lot but I can handle that s**t sober too.”

The interviewer then asked whether her family knew what she was up to. She said her mum and her grandma knew.

She said her mum went to prison when she was just 13 years old and none of her family would take her in. She said her mum was released six months ago.

“So I’ve been talking to her and she feels real guilty for like, not being there as when I was younger,” she said. “But I tell her it’s not, you know, like I could change my life any day, you know? I choose to do this to myself. I just want some good treatment.”

Deadly scourge sweeping the US

The heartbreaking interview with Monique highlights a disturbing trend in the US where the FBI says fake prescription pills are “surfacing in communities everywhere”.

“Unsurprisingly, criminal organisations (i.e., cartels) are in the drug business to make money, and illegally produced fentanyl can bring them major amounts of it,” the bureau said.

“One kilogram can be purchased from China for approximately US$5,000 ($7500) and converted to products that generate more than US$1.5 million ($2.2 million) in revenue in the United States.

Cartels use fentanyl because it is cheap to produce, and they can increase the product’s volume by mixing it with other substances, including lactose, mannitol, and sugars — this process is known as “cutting.” Fentanyl is also added to other drugs, such as heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine to increase product weight and profitability.

Criminal gangs are making huge profits from the drug. Picture: Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“In the last six years, the availability and lethality of fake prescription pills in the United States has increased dramatically,” the FBI said. “In 2021, the DEA seized approximately 20.4 million counterfeit pills and 15,000 pounds of fentanyl. Testing of the pills determined 6 out of every 10 contained a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl.

“The Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) Cartels are responsible for most of these pills. Based out of Mexico, they are mass-producing fentanyl and pressing it into fake pills that have flooded into the United States for distribution.”

More than 150 people die every day from overdoses connected to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2021 alone, there were nearly 107,000 fatal drug overdoses in the US with synthetic opioids tied to some 71,000 of those deaths.

Warning for Aussies

Australian Federal Police member and head of the Australian Federal Police Association, Alex Caruana, told news.com.au in August that the threat of large hauls of fentanyl entering the country was serious.

“In places like Wagga and Dubbo where we can see what ice is doing to the organisation, we can see these pharmaceuticals are also a problem,” Mr Caruana said.

“If non-pharmaceutical fentanyl gets into those rural areas, it’s going to annihilate them. There’s already a scourge there with the ice, and it’s really going to make an impact.

“The cost to the Australian is going to be significant because we’re going to have to fork out money to prop up rural Australia.”

Australian authorities last year seized the largest ever discovery of the deadly opioid fentanyl hidden in an industrial wooden lathe.

He feared bad actors, both domestically and abroad, are closely monitoring attrition rates and staff and resource shortages within the AFP.

“They know when there’s (industrial action), and when they know that we are stretched – of course they’re going to exploit it. That’s exactly what they do. They find weaknesses and exploit them,” Mr Caruana said.

“They are the scum of the earth, and they will exploit those weaknesses – that’s what these crooks do – of course, they’re paying attention to this.”