US Fentanyl Seizures Grow at Unprecedented Rates

A consumer holds an injectable dose of heroin laced with fentanyl in Pennsylvania, the United States, on July 19.SPENCER PLATT / AFP

The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) department has seized 3,800 kilos of fentanyl so far this year, a figure that is almost equivalent to the total of the drug seized in all of 2020. In parallel, the Health authorities in different states have warned of an increase in overdose deaths due to this opioid. In Washington alone, 46% of deaths derived from excessive drug use are caused by fentanyl, the substance that jeopardizes government strategies to combat drug trafficking and the increase in deaths due to its use.

The CBP has detailed in its statistics that since 2018 the amount of fentanyl seized at the US borders has multiplied by 6.5.

June has been the third month since there are records with more of this drug seized, with more than 450 kilos.

They are only surpassed by December and October 2020, when the authorities registered 540 and 550 kilos respectively.

In proportion, it is still well below other drugs - marijuana at almost 130,000 kilograms a year is the most seized drug in the United States, followed by methamphetamine and cocaine - but the parallel increase in drug overdoses raises concern among women. authorities.

More information

• The dangerous pendulum of opioid drugs

The Washington State Department of Health has reported that of the 418 overdose deaths in the first three months of the year, 191 of them correspond to fentanyl. Most of the deaths from the excessive use of this pharmaceutical substance correspond to young people under the age of 30 from ethnic minorities with difficulties in accessing the health system. In a statement they have warned the population to be alert to the consumption of blue pills marked with an M. These pills can be sold as an opioid drug under prescription, but their purity and composition can be misleading, endangering the health of consumers , especially if they are mixed with other medications.

The worrying increase in the use of this drug has also been felt in Mexico. The latest report from the International Narcotics Control Department details that in a sample carried out by the Mexican government on heroin and crystalline methamphetamine users in the cities of the northern border of Mexico, it was detected that 93% of white heroin in powder, 40% of the black heroin and 100% of the

(a combination of heroin and crystalline methamphetamine) contained fentanyl.

In an attempt to prosecute the trafficking of this drug, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, has introduced a bill to toughen the punishment for anyone who manufactures or distributes fentanyl. "This year alone, the Texas Department of Public Safety has seized enough fentanyl to kill everyone in Texas and California together," Abbot's cabinet reported in a statement. In total, there has been a 950% increase in fentanyl seizures on the southern Texas border compared to last year.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has detailed that in the last two years deaths due to overdoses have shot up almost 46%.

Synthetic opioid drugs like fentanyl cause five times more deaths than heroin and 3.5 times more than cocaine.

It began to be used in the 1960s as an intravenous anesthetic, since it is between 50 and 100 times more powerful than morphine.

The mixture of analgesia and euphoria it provides leads many to use it as a substitute for heroin, as it is considerably cheaper.

Subscribe here

to the

of EL PAÍS México and receive all the informative keys of the current situation of this country