With the fentanyl epidemic continuing to ravage the country, Kendall County has not been immune from the impacts, which was evidenced by the conviction of a 22-year-old man last week for possessing between 4 and 200 grams of the potentially deadly substance.
A 22-year-old Cypress, Texas, resident, Kylar Douglas Robinson, pleaded guilty on Thursday morning to the second-degree felony of possessing the Penalty Group 1 substance with an intent to manufacture and deliver charge dropped. Robinson was charged with the crime nearly two years ago when he was 20 years old.
During his guilty plea, Robinson told 451st District Court Judge Kirsten Cohoon that he has turned his life around and has been working, supporting himself and working to become a positive member of his community since he was released from jail in October 2021 after serving nearly a year in the Kendall County jail.
“Mr. Robinson, I understand the length of time, and I hate that it takes so long as well,” Cohoon said of the time from his charge to his plea. “We go as fast as we can, but the crime I’m about to talk about is so significant it takes that amount of time. You are the one who put yourself in that offense.
“If you had done what you’re doing now back in 2020, you wouldn’t be here. But I appreciate, and I don’t want you to think at all that my statement is depreciative of the life changing that you’ve had. … I take no pleasure, I can promise you that, Mr. Robinson, in seeing a young man who is has finally gotten his life together go to jail.”
While 4 grams could be seen by some as insignificant, the U.S. Department of Justice and Drug EnforcementAdministration states fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that “is approximately 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin as an analgesic.”
Epidemic response
In response to the epidemic, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, Kendall County District Attorney Nicole Bishop and former Texas Public Safety Captain Jaeson Jones conducted a roundtable last September.
A woman who lost her daughter to fentanyl, Virginia Krieger, founder of Angel Mom and ParentsAgainst Illicit Narcotics, asked each guest to pick up the packet of Sweet ’N Low that lay before them. She asked each to dump out the contents of the packets then rub his or her fingers on the inside of the seemingly empty packets. Showing the residue left behind on her finger, she said it was enough to hospitalize or kill someone.
“That’s the level of lethality we’re dealing with, with illicit Fentanyl powder,” Krieger said. “Most people don’t understand that. If you taste your finger, you can clearly taste the Sweet’N Low on your finger.”
Krieger said there has been a linear progression over the past 50 years of drug-related deaths, but she said the country is approaching a paradigm shift where the numbers will reach a level that establish an entirely new problem. She outlined the history of illicit Fentanyl in the United States, saying it began with the mass imports from China in 2014 and 2015, but Mexico has become the main producer of the illicit drugs now.
Krieger pointed out that children are being killed by the drug looking to self-medicate or try something new, but they are being sent illicit Fentanyl that is made to mimic the appearance of more regular party drugs like Xanax, Oxycontin or Adderall.
“These are kids in the past we never would’ve heard of,” Krieger said. “They might have played a little bit (with drugs) and left it behind, and now they’re dying. Within three months of COVID, everyone in this country knew to wear a mask, social distance, wash your hands. We are eight years into this Fentanyl crisis and our kids still don’t know about these fake pills.”
Showing the rapid rise in distribution and misuse, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes there were roughly 2,600 fentanyl overdoses in both 2011 and 2012 but more than 56,000 people died from a fentanyl overdose in 2020. The federal agency states the number of fentanyl-related deaths increased year-over-year since 2012, noting the deadly drug has seen a growth in cartel trafficking from Mexico.
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