We can feel relieved that the car Darren Glenn Yeater was driving when he was arrested in Baker City on June 1 has been impounded, and along with it the 40.2 grams of fentanyl powder, nearly 16,000 fentanyl pills and quantities of other drugs police found inside while doing a warrant search the next day.

But that relief doesn’t completely assuage the frightening prospect of those drugs, and in particular the frequently lethal fentanyl, being so near. The synthetic opioid, which is much more powerful than heroin, is responsible for a significant number of overdose deaths in Oregon and nationwide. Officials blame fentanyl for contributing to Oregon’s 41% increase in overdose deaths in 2021, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Baker City Police Chief Ty Duby said on June 7 that although Baker County once was “pretty insulated” from some of the greatest dangers of the illicit drug trade, that’s not the case with fentanyl. It’s cheap and easy to transport. And it’s deadly — in many cases because the person who took it didn’t know it was fentanyl.

The day after Yeater’s car was searched, an Oregon State Police trooper cited two Washington men, on Interstate 84 near Farewell Bend, for possession of much smaller — less than 5 grams each — of fentanyl. Due to Measure 110, which Oregon voters approved in November 2020 (though about 62% of Baker County voters were opposed), the two men were given what amounts to a traffic ticket because the amount of fentanyl they had was under the 5-gram threshold.

Yet according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, even 2 milligrams of fentanyl can kill a person. In other words, having 4.9 grams of fentanyl — approximately 2,450 lethal doses — would net you a $100 fine.

Yeater, who had substantially larger quantities, is facing much more serious punishment, of course.

But for a drug as dangerous as fentanyl, Oregonians might wish to reconsider whether we ought to treat people who have any amount as though they had failed to make a complete stop at a sign, or exceeded the posted speed limit by 10 mph.

— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor