By Lawrence Richard - February 23, 2019
A synthetic opioid is now considered to be the most lethal pain killer in the country.
According to a Fox News report, Fentanyl has been involved “more than any drug in the majority of overdose deaths in 2016.” This is the first time a drug has topped heroin for the most lethal top spot in more than four years.
The Drug Enforcement Administration reports Fentanyl is 80-100 times stronger than morphine and commonly used for pain management.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says fentanyl is now the drug involved in the most fatal overdoses in the U.S., with fatalities from synthetic opioids including fentanyl jumping more than 45 percent from 2016 to 2017, when they accounted for some 28,000 of about 70,000 overdose deaths of all kinds,” Fox News reports.
Speaking of Fentanyl, former United States Congressman Ernest Istook wrote in an op-ed with the Washington Examiner that “America knows we’re in the midst of an opioid crisis, yet one of the leading drivers of these deaths gets scant attention from reporters or elected officials.”
He continued:
In 2017, more than 70,000 Americans died from drug overdose deaths — and that number is rising. Since 2011, the slowest growth year of fentanyl deaths has been a 50 percent increase. As a result, fentanyl has now surpassed heroin, oxycodone, and hydrocodone as the most deadly opioid.
This is why policymakers who merely propose more regulations on pharmaceutical companies will never stem the epidemic of deaths. Ending the opioid crisis will require a larger crackdown on both supply and demand, including the lucrative trafficking from clandestine Chinese labs via Mexico.
And:
Some leaders in Congress understand the problem and its challenge. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has convened hearings and explains the situation succinctly:
The new economic model for these drug traffickers poses a unique problem never seen before: massive drug rings have been replaced by the sole proprietor. A single individual with a computer, P.O. Box, and a pill press can order fentanyl directly from China to his or her home. … Fentanyl production … highlights a fundamental transformation in the conventional supply side of narco-trafficking.
More members of Congress should follow Grassley’s lead and look more closely into ways Washington can help combat this deadly drug.
Greater resources are needed to inspect international mail shipments, as are international alliances with China, Mexico, and other involved nations to stem the illicit manufacture and smuggling of fentanyl. But unless we tackle demand as well as supply, traffickers will still produce these drugs cheaply and sell them dearly.
While the drug was initially understood to be imported from Chinese labs overseas, it is now believed to being created in the U.S. Some other supplies of Fentanyl are smuggled over the U.S. border with Mexico, Fox News reports:
Most fentanyl smuggled from Mexico is about 10 percent pure and enters hidden in vehicles at official border crossings around Nogales and San Diego, Customs and Border Protection data show. A decreasing number of smaller shipments with purity of up to 90 percent still enter the U.S. in packages sent from China.
Although 85 percent of the fentanyl from Mexico is seized at San Diego area border crossings, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2018 National Drug Threat Assessment said seizures have surged at Arizona’s border and elsewhere around the state.
DEA statistics show Arizona fentanyl seizures rose to 445 pounds (202 kilograms), including 379,557 pills, in the fiscal year ending in October 2018, up from 172 pounds (78 kilograms), including 54,984 pills, during the previous 12-month period.