By Kim Haarberg

It took me about an hour to write this. And in that time, 10 people in the United States died from fentanyl overdoses. That’s 10 sons, daughters, parents and friends gone because of a counterfeit tablet laced with fentanyl. 10 people every hour — day and night, week after week, month after month. 240 every day, totaling more than 87,000 last year.

That staggering number of Americans lost to primarily fentanyl overdose is the equivalent of a sold-out Colorado Buffaloes home game at Folsom Field (50,183) plus a sold-out Nuggets or Avalanche game at Ball Arena (18,000), plus a packed Red Rocks concert (9,525)! These numbers are even more shocking when one considers each life lost has its own story and affects so many other people’s lives. 

One pill can kill. In fact, it took the life of my daughter, Megan. I fight off tears and anger each time I am reminded of this devasting reality on me, and our family and friends. Besides being my daughter, Megan was my little buddy and I will forever miss our times playing her guitar and singing country songs together. I will miss not being able to walk her down the aisle and never having her children in my life. We held her funeral on what would have been her 25th birthday. My anger also stems from the level of deaths that continue to plague our nation — and heartless politicians like U.S. Rep. Jason Crow and his cohorts who think it’s a partisan game.

Their acts and rhetoric are sickening. These types of elected leaders aren’t taking steps to stop the fentanyl deaths forced on us from the evil cartels. In fact, it’s worse. Instead, these politicians are inciting an insurrection within our military by instructing our troops with videos to disobey orders that may be deemed “unlawful” — and yet they are unable to provide any examples of orders that are unlawful. That is a dangerous political game and cruel ignorance of the true fentanyl destruction we are seeing smothering American citizens.

In Colorado alone, fentanyl killed 852 times between October 2023 and October 2024. The Gazette reported on New Year’s Day, 2024 overdose numbers surpassed the previous year. Fentanyl is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine and now contaminates cocaine, meth, fake Xanax and even marijuana vapes. Two milligrams, less than a few grains of salt, can stop a heart.

Nationally, the closure of our southern boarder has helped to fight drug trafficking immensely. However, in Colorado, our state legislators have de-criminalized drugs, and when some of them realized their mistake, they tried to pull things back during the 2025 session, but it is not enough. Currently, in Colorado, any individual can possess one gram or less of fentanyl without penalties. One gram could be up to 500 pills. I repeat, one pill can kill. Five hundred pills could kill 500 people.

Cartels press millions of these blue “M30” pills in Mexico, ship them north, and flood our streets. In 2024, the DEA seized enough fentanyl to kill every American twice over. Most of us have seen the drug boats on video speeding their way toward the United States.

Thank goodness we have finally secured the border, and we are getting more aggressive on the cartels literally boating the drugs onto our shorelines. Colorado and America have proven we can bend this curve. Now we have to break it. We must get aggressive today, to stop the movement and distribution of fentanyl — it is literally a matter of life or death.

Killers are coming to poison our kids, our families, and our friends. It is time to defend ourselves and fight back on behalf of the innocent. We need to stop losing our children to this poison. I call on our elected officials to do better. Our legislators need to ban fentanyl completely. Contact your legislator today and tell them to step up for our kids and vote for tougher penalties for drug dealers. We need to protect our families and friends from this silent killer.

Kim Haarberg is the owner of several small businesses in the Denver area, a philanthropist and investor.