KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Jackson County Drug Task Force is sounding the alarm about what may be a lethal drug combination.

It comes as the number of deadly overdoses attributed to fentanyl in Kansas City skyrockets. According to the Task Force the number of people who died by fentanyl overdoses from 2019 to 2021 jumped 56%.

Last year alone, the Drug Task Force said it seized nearly 13,000 fentanyl pills. That was a 300% increase compared to 2020.

Now police and the Task Force are concerned about what they are calling “Red Lips — The Kiss of Death.”

They say it is fentanyl mixed with methamphetamine. The fentanyl-meth combination has been distributed across the five-state area in baggies featuring red lips, according to the Task Force.

They believe the red lips are a metaphor for “kiss of death.” Law enforcement traced a series of overdoses in the Midwest earlier this year to the drugs sold in these baggies.

The DEA said that part of the reason fentanyl is so dangerous is that drug dealers often get the mix wrong, so no one knows exactly what is in each pill. Of the counterfeit pills the DEA tests, it found 42% contain a lethal dose.

Police said taking just two milligrams of fentanyl is enough to kill someone.