Las Vegas officials reportedly revealed the cause of death for Adam Harrison, who died in January.
The Clark County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner confirmed that Harrison, the son of “Pawn Stars” personality Rick Harrison, died of an accidental overdose of fentanyl and methamphetamine, TMZ reported on Thursday. One of the TV star’s three sons, Adam died on Jan. 19, 2024. He was 39.
The Clark County coroner did not immediately confirm the details of Adam’s cause of death to The Times on Friday.
The Las Vegas coroner confirmed Rick Harrison’s previous announcement that his son died of a fentanyl overdose. In a statement shared to TMZ via his rep, Harrison blamed the border crisis.
“Yes, I can confirm Adam died from a fentanyl overdose. The fentanyl crisis in this country must be taken more seriously. It seems it is just flowing over the borders and nothing is being done about it. We must do better.”
“You will always be in my heart! I love you Adam,” he wrote in a January Instagram post mourning his son, who was not featured on the long-running reality TV series.
In 2023, drug overdose fatalities topped 112,000 for the first time in U.S. history, surpassing the devastation wrought by the crack cocaine crisis in the 1980s and the opioid epidemic of the early 2000s, NPR reported in December. Public health experts said that fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, is responsible for a majority of those deaths.
In Los Angeles County alone, fentanyl was the cause of more than 60% of accidental drug or alcohol overdoses in 2022.
Illicit fentanyl — easier to transport in pill or powder form — is made abroad and smuggled over the southern border, but is majorly transported by U.S. citizens, the CATO Institute found in 2022. Border Patrol data showed that 91% of seizures in recent years at the border were from U.S. citizens.
“The United States is in the midst of an unprecedented drug poisoning epidemic,” the DEA said in a statement earlier this week about the sale of fentanyl pills.
The statement added: “DEA will continue to use every tool at its disposal to help fight this drug poisoning and overdose crisis and to save American lives.”
___
© 2024 Los Angeles Times
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
