As fentanyl continues to flood the streets of America, drug traffickers continue to bring it across the U.S.-Mexico border daily. This is where the fight to stop it and fight it continues.
Fentanyl keeps coming into Arizona. In just two days, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at the Nogales Port of Entry found 833,400 fentanyl pills. Since October, more than 18.8 million doses of fentanyl have been taken from the Tucson area of operations. This is more than any other area in the country.
Heroin is 50 times more potent than fentanyl, and morphine is 100 times stronger. Two milligrams, which is about the size of a mosquito, of the deadly drug is enough to kill an adult. The CDC said that more than 100,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2021, and more than 65,000 deaths were linked to fentanyl.
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In many cases, the person takes the drug without knowing it. Fentanyl is easy to mix with other drugs like cocaine and heroin, and illegal versions of the drug are often made to look like candy.
The flow of this dangerous drug is a lot like the cocaine epidemic of the 1980s. Fentanyl was first used as a cheaper alternative to heroin, but it was much more difficult. Like cocaine, as the drug became more popular, more of it was made.
“Opioid overdose deaths are nothing compared to cocaine overdose death. The morbidity and mortality, the risk of dying from using opioids is enormously greater than that of cocaine,” said Dr. James Besante, with Carle Health.
“What is similar to the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s is stigma. Especially stigma lobbied against certain communities. We have seen the overdose epidemic in the United States of America has not affected all people equally.”
While most cocaine came from Colombia and was first found in Miami, fentanyl is made with help from more than one country. The Drug Enforcement Administration says that the chemicals come from China and the pills are made in makeshift labs in Mexico before they are sent to the U.S.
In the 1980s, cocaine operations were run by trafficking groups, just like fentanyl operations are now run by cartels.
CBP is doing everything it can to stop this problem. From September 2021 to August 2022, they stopped about $3 billion worth of drug smuggling. At the border, agents caught 13,581 pounds of fentanyl. At least 23,248 pounds of fentanyl were seized by federal, state, local, and Tribal law enforcement agencies in the United States.