Authorities recently busted a mother and son duo who allegedly teamed up to smuggle several thousands dollars worth or heroin and fentanyl into Maine.
Police arrested 57-year-old Diane Beaton Tuesday and 39-year-old Aaron Nadeau April 19 following a three-month investigation by state drug agents and the Berwick Police Department into drug deals carried out by the pair. Nadeau, a convicted felon in New Hampshire, was snagged by police while returning from a bulk narcotics purchase in Massachusetts with his girlfriend, 41-year-old Tanya Leighton, reports the Press Herald.
He admitted to police that he and Leighton, who had the drugs in her purse, purchased 62 grams of fentanyl for $1,000, a quantity that carries a street value of roughly $6,200. Leighton and Nadeau were taken to York County Jail on charges of unlawful trafficking of schedule W drugs.
Agents with the Maine Drug Enforcement Administration arrested Beaton, Nadeau’s mother, on charges of trafficking schedule W drugs April 24. She allegedly sold narcotics to undercover agents several times over the course of the three-month investigation. She is also being held at York County Jail on a $20,000 bond.
Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of accidental death for Americans under the age of 50, killing more than 64,000 people in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The increase is driven primarily by opioids, which claimed 42,249 lives in 2016 — a 28 percent increase over the roughly 33,000 lives lost to opioids in 2015.
Opioid overdose made up a staggering 66 percent of all drug overdose deaths in 2016, surpassing the annual number of lives lost to breast cancer.
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