Enough fentanyl to kill all Americans seized in US in 2022

US authorities seized more in 2022 fentanyl than it would take to kill the entire American population, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) announced yesterday, highlighting the deadly risk due to the widespread availability of this artificial opioid.

The DEA explained that 50.6 million counterfeit pills containing fentanyl and 4.5 million tons of fentanyl powder were seized during this year. This is an amount corresponding to “more than 379 million potentially lethal doses”, according to its calculations.

According to the agency’s press release, fentanyl, which accounted for only a small portion of overdose deaths ten years ago, has become the nation’s “deadliest drug threat” today.

“This is a highly addictive artificial opioid and 50 times stronger than heroin. As little as two milligrams of fentanyl, a small amount that could fit on the end of a pencil, is considered a potentially lethal dose.”he emphasized.

Fentanyl is blamed for much of the more than 107,000 overdose deaths in the US between July 2021 and June 2022, according to official data.

Because it is cheap and easy to produce, fentanyl has replaced prescription opioids as well as heroin in the drug market.

According to the DEA, the main traffickers of fentanyl in the US are the Mexican Sinaloa and New Generation Jalisco cartels, as reported by AFP and relayed by the Athens News Agency.

The fentanyl they traffic is manufactured in Mexico, with chemicals that are “largely supplied to them from China,” the federal drug enforcement agency emphasized.

Some of it is trafficked in the form of copies of commonly prescribed prescription drugs such as Percocet, OxyContin and Xanax, according to the same img.

About 60% of fake fentanyl pills tested by the DEA contained a potentially lethal amount of the synthetic opioid.

Source: News Beast

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