A golden retriever stumbled upon a massive amount of black tar heroin while digging up what the owners thought was a time capsule in Oregon.
The Yamhill County Sheriff’s Office announced Thursday the owners of an 18-month-old dog named Kenyon, who wish to remain anonymous, discovered drugs while the dog was digging in the family’s backyard. The substance was later identified as 15 ounces of black tar heroin worth roughly $85,000, KATU reported Friday.
The dog Kenyon, a golden retriever, is being honored by the community for the find, which comes amid the national opioid epidemic. Yamhill County Sheriff Tim Svenson gave the dog a Yamhill County K-9 citation ribbon and named Kenyon an honorary narcotics K-9 for life.
“Opioid addiction and overdose deaths are on the rise and with the help of Kenyon this large quantity of heroin is removed from our community,” Svenson said on the department’s Facebook page.
Oregon is struggling with opioid abuse and death, particularly from synthetic opioids like fentanyl, a painkiller roughly 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine.
Synthetic opioid deaths spiked by 72.2 percent between 2014 and 2015 throughout the U.S., compared to a 20.6 percent spike in heroin deaths and a 2.6 percent increase in prescription painkiller deaths over the same period. While synthetic opioids are still a relatively benign problem in Oregon, they are blamed as one of the primary drivers of the opioid epidemic nationally.
A recent investigation by STAT predicts the annual death toll from opioids will rise by roughly 35 percent between 2015 and 2027. Their analysis predicts up to 500,000 people could die from opioids over the next decade. The experts agree, even in a best-case scenario, the crisis will not visibly start to subside until after 2020.
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