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| Drug Enforcement Administration |
Nearly one million people have died of drug overdose deaths in the past two decades, but a growing majority of those deaths in recent years have involved dangerous synthetic opioids like fentanyl.
Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. First synthesized by Belgian chemist Paul Janssen as a painkiller in 1960, it proved to be a useful drug to help patients with traumatic injuries.
But it wasn’t until roughly the past decade that the drug made its way onto the black market and truly began destroying lives and communities across the U.S.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that more than 108,000 people in the U.S. died of drug overdoses between February 2021 and February 2022. Of those, more than 70% involved fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.
One of the main drivers of fentanyl’s proliferation in recent years is cheaper production methods. Whereas other plant-derived drugs like heroin and cocaine need to be grown and cultivated, synthesized drugs like fentanyl are cheaper – both for producers and consumers.
“The production of (heroin) is expensive and time-consuming because you have to use the actual poppy from poppy fields. With fentanyl being a synthetic drug, you eliminate that process, and it’s much more lucrative,” a Los Angeles Police officer and drug recognition expert told Fox News Digital. “A legitimate 40-milligram OxyContin pill will be around $40 bucks. You can get these illicit pills, like the M-30s, for $10 or $15 bucks each.” --->READ MORE HERE
More black market fentanyl is being seized from drug smugglers at the U.S.-Mexico border than ever before — an indication of just how much of the powerful powdery substance cartels are moving into the United States.
Consequently, U.S. overdose deaths have skyrocketed — all while illegal migration at the southern border soars to the highest levels in U.S. history. Ahead of the midterm elections, Republicans have pointed to both border phenomena as being connected.
"The #BidenBorderCrisis is poisoning our communities by allowing fentanyl to be smuggled across our southern border," the House Republican Conference posted to its 1.3 million followers on Twitter Sunday.
Drug experts, however, point to U.S. consumers hooked on opioids as the driver for the market, a demand that Mexican cartels are eager to supply. While some of the same cartels pushing fentanyl into the country also smuggle people, they do so through different pathways: one through ports of entry and the migrants through the porous points in between.
"Most fentanyl drug smuggling attempts occur at Ports of Entry, which continue to make the large majority of fentanyl seizures along the border," a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency that inspects incoming goods and people, wrote in an email Wednesday. --->READ MORE HEREFollow link below to a related story:
American teenager arrested trying to smuggle 16 pounds of fentanyl across Texas border
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