The Drug Enforcement Agency has issued its first public warning in six that a growing number of fake pills bought online through e-commerce websites—and promoted by social media sites—are laced with potentially lethal amounts of the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl. Noting that we are in the midst of an overdose crisis—with more than 93,000 fatalities last year—the DEA said that the counterfeit pills are driving the surge in deaths. Fentanyl, even in much smaller amounts, is deadlier than street heroin, and more and more online sellers, as well as dealers, are adding the deadly drug to prescription pills. The agency said it has seized more than 9.5 million fake pills so far this year, more than the last two years combined, and that two out of every five fake pills with fentanyl contain a potentially lethal dose of the drug. Meanwhile, a new study published in the journal Jama Psychiatry finds that methamphetamine use is surging as a major cause of high-risk addiction and overdose death, in part due to meth containing fentanyl. From 2015 to 2015, there was a 180 percent increase in the number of deaths linked to meth, from more than 5,500 a year to nearly 15, 500, according to pre-pandemic data. The researchers found Native Americans and Alaska Natives still have the highest rate of methamphetamine use disorder and have seen sharp increases in drug deaths in recent years, while Black Americans saw a tenfold increase in meth use over the same five-year period. In addition, there was increased use of needles to inject the drug, and a rapid transition from casual and recreational meth use to full-blown addiction. And finally, the American Medical Association has issued a report showing the disparities between efforts to fight the opioid epidemic and outcomes. It noted that while there has been a 44 percent drop in opioid prescribing in the past decade, due mostly to stricter prescription monitoring, the country is still facing a worsening epidemic of drug-related overdoses and deaths. Overdoses and deaths are spiking even though physicians have increased the use of monitoring programs—more than 910 million times in 2020, according to the AMA. It also reports that although more than 106,000 physicians and other health professionals have received the required waiver allowing them to prescribe opioid withdrawal medications to treat opioid-use disorder, between 80 percent and 90 percent of people with substance use disorder receive no treatment whatsoever.