WILMINGTON, N.C. -- A North Carolina sheriff's office thought it made a huge drug bust, seizing 13 pounds of fentanyl worth $2 million on the street. The powder was found in a home along with other drugs and paraphernalia. A field test indicated it was the powerful opioid, justifying a host of charges against three suspects.
Most of those charges soon evaporated when a state lab concluded that whatever the powder was, it wasn't fentanyl.
The sheriff's office then sent the powder to a private lab, and the results arrived this week. New Hanover Sheriff's Lt. Jerry Brewer that the powder seized in July includes no illicit ingredients, and is nothing more than "a combination of simple and complex carbohydrates." In other words, sugar, worth about $8 at the grocery store.
