A few grains of Fentanyl will kill you. Here's why more people in Louisiana are dying.

Lyric “Bebop” Verrett was a tattoo artist in Lafayette. She was an inspiring soul, but she was also a drug addict, her uncle said.

"She wasn't a drug addict you find on the street. She had a job she went to every day. She was an aspiring artist," Dr. James Noriega told the Lafayette City Council Tuesday night.

"She was one of those who got lost in her own way. One night she took something laced with fentanyl and didn't wake up."

He called her death a fentanyl poisoning.

Fentanyl-related drug deaths are soaring in Lafayette Parish, coroner Ken Odinet told the Lafayette City Council Tuesday. He said it was becoming more of an issue and people didn't likely know how bad the issue was becoming.

"I remember when I started this job. I'd get a call every few months about somebody's kid drinking too much, taking pills, going off to college," Odinet told the Lafayette City Council Tuesday night.

"I'm getting calls every week now. It's black, white, it's rich, poor. It has no demographic whatsoever."

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Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. But it's cheap to make and drug dealers sometimes mix it into other drugs to increase profits and increase addiction.

Two milligrams of fentanyl can be lethal depending on a person’s body size, tolerance and past usage, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

In 2015, there were 32 people who died from overdoses in Lafayette Parish. In 2021, there were 136 people who died from overdoses, 101 of whom had synthetic fentanyl in their system.

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From January through April 16 of this year, there were 36 people who died from an overdose, Odinet said. Data from January to mid-March shows 38 people died from overdose deaths, 32 of whom had synthetic fentanyl in their system.

if the current trend continues, more than 200 people could die of an overdose this year in Lafayette Parish, Odinet said.

"We've got to find some answers and we need treatment," Odinet said.

Overdose deaths are most prevalent among those 24 to 44 years old, Odinet said, but he didn't think it would be long "before it trickles down into the kids."

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The problem is made more prevalent when fentanyl is present in other drugs such as pain pills, cocaine and marijuana. Sometimes users don't know fentanyl is laced in their drugs.

Lafayette Parish Chief Death Investigator Keith Talamo told the council there was a man who died after fentanyl was found in his vape pen. Talamo said it was unclear whether the man knew the deadly drug was in his vape.

Odinet said he's reaching out to law enforcement, the district attorney's office, school districts and others to get the message out about the dangers of fentanyl and to see what can be done to combat the problem. He's hoping to start a task force.

"We all need to be involved to make this work," he said. "No one entity is going to get it done. It's almost like we're drowning in it and it's not going to get better anytime."

Contact Ashley White at adwhite@theadvertiser.com or on Twitter @AshleyyDi.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Fentanyl overdoses rising in Lafayette Parish; deaths could reach 200