Perhaps it sounds fatalistic, but it’s actually more realistic: carfentanil has finally arrived in Pennsylvania. And if that surprises you, well, it shouldn’t. The drug — 10,000 times stronger than morphine — was always destined to surface here sooner or later.

Now it has, and so far it’s been great at doing two things: killing people and further exposing Pennsylvania’s lack of preparedness when it comes to an opioid crisis that’s been ignored for far too long.

Part of the problem can be traced to a disparity between availability and post-addiction treatment. Opioids are cheap, easy to get, easy to use, and ferociously difficult to kick once a person has become addicted.

By now it’s common knowledge that opioid addictions can just as easily start with a sports injury and a prescription for pain pills as with a person’s decision to put a heroin needle into their arm for the first time.

In 2016 the epidemic claimed more than 60 lives in Butler County, more than 3,500 lives in Pennsylvania, and tens of thousands of lives nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now Carfentanil is here, and the prospects for fatal overdoses are growing by leaps and bounds. In September The New York Times reported that the drug can kill in doses smaller than a snowflake.

Drug manufacturers and dealers don’t care — they intentionally add carfentanil and it’s weaker cousin, fentanyl, to batches of heroin, seeking to increase their profit margins.

Many opioid addicts don’t care either. In September, as Cincinnati was experiencing a tidal wave of overdoses — more than 200 in two weeks — linked to carfentanil, users flocked to the carfentanil-laced batches of heroin, ostensibly seeking a stronger high.

By late last year the synthetic opioid, which law enforcement believes is manufactured in China and Mexico, had made its way into Ohio, the Gulf Coast of Florida, and central Kentucky. It was only a matter of time before it appeared in Pennsylvania, and here it is — linked yesterday to two overdose deaths in Beaver County.

Carfentanil’s appearance has implications for people other than addicts. Emergency responders in Cincinnati have begun carrying anti-overdose medication (Naloxone) for themselves, in case they inhale or touch the tiniest bit of the drug while responding to an overdose. State officials in Ohio have asked police officers to stop field testing drugs found on the street, because they’re not equipped to handle carfentanil.

Photos circulated of the Canadian Mounted Police intercepting a package of carfentanil last June look more like workers cleaning up a hazardous waste spill than police officers executing a drug raid.

In August we wrote that carfentanil isn’t a drug — it’s a weapon. That remains true, and it’s a class of weapon we’re poorly equipped to deal with.

Regulators can’t keep pace with the production of new generations of synthetic opioids because there’s no nationwide clearinghouse where law enforcement, medical examiners, crime labs and health care professionals can share what they learn.

Pennsylvania continues to lag in both addiction treatment opportunities and productive anti-opioid culture. State organizations representing physicians resist new guidelines intended to curb irresponsible opioid prescriptions. Lawmakers have failed to provide emergency responders with options like hard handoffs, which would help put more addicts into treatment directly after they’re saved from an overdose. The state can’t even convince many police departments — especially those in rural areas — that Naloxone should be part of every officer’s kit while on duty.

If we can’t get together as citizens and agree to focus resources, time and willpower on this problem, it will continue to eat our communities alive and endanger those on whom we depend for protection, support and service.