Hidden websites and online options offering opioids, including fentanyl for sale, are making it difficult to stop the suppliers.

“In some cases people would order it like they would a pizza and have it delivered to them, it’s just that easy to get,” Keith Martin said, assistant special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration Cleveland Office.

Martin’s office handles investigations across northern Ohio from Toledo to Cleveland and Youngstown.

He tells 21 News that fentanyl, often laced with heroin, is coming into the Northeast Ohio region from other countries including China and India.

The sheer volume of packages delivered from overseas into the U.S. and throughout the country make stopping the supply chain a big challenge.

“To track a package like that is literally you’re looking for a needle in a haystack,” Martin said. 

Unless agents can determine the identities of the buyer and the seller, he says it’s almost impossible to locate the packages before they get into the hands of an addict.

If users go to the dark web, buyers and sellers can remain anonymous– leaving no trace of the purchase. 

On the streets of Warren, it’s rare for a weekend to go by without police responding to drug overdoses.

By the time the drugs make into the hands of users, there’s no telling where they came from.

“Usually when we come across it, it’s already packaged for sale,” Lt. Greg Hoso said, with the Warren police department’s Street Crimes Unit.

Hoso says the people they come across during overdose calls often didn’t know the potency of the drug they used. It’s common for police to recover evidence that eventually tests positive for a mix of synthetic drugs including fentanyl.

Martin says some sellers will stagger drugs throughout multiple shipments in an attempt to throw off investigators.

But in one local case, he says multiple packages from one sender set off a red flag.

“We were tracking a package coming from overseas and the sender of that package was tracking 21 other packages that same day of drugs coming to the U.S.,” he said.

The DEA remains in routine contact with foreign countries to know what trends could be next and how it could arrive into the hands of those looking for their next fix.

In October of 2016, the DEA dismantled a Mexican drug trafficking organization that was bringing kilogram quantites of heroin, cocaine and fentanyl into Cleveland.

Martin said some of those delieveries were then funneled into communities outside the city and into other nearby cities including Youngstown.

While they’re working to making progress by shutting down suppliers from all avenues, Martin believes the only way to make an lasting impact is to prevent people from getting hooked on opioids in the first place.

“We have to get the message out, it has to be education and prevention, because I don’t see law enforcement or anyone arresting their way out of the problem or even treating our way out of the problem,” Martin said.