evidence: The magnitude of this calamity now dwarfs all previous drug epidemics, from the 1980s to the opioid crisis of the 2000s."We’ve seen an entire community devastated," Louise Vincent, a harm reduction activist in North Carolina, told NPR, the public radio system, who says she sometimes still uses street opioids, including fentanyl. [...] Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid much more powerful than heroin, which is associated with the majority of drug deaths in a nation where the large supply market for illegal narcotics is increasingly dangerous. [...] "We have had more Americans killed by fentanyl than in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam combined," said Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and candidate to the Republican presidential nomination.