A New York City Sheriff’s Investigation of an Overdose of Pentanyl as a Form of Substantial Drug Trafficking
The woman charged with concealing 15,000 fentanyl pills in a Lego box as part of a drug trafficking scheme was arrested this week. The largest seizure of Fentanyl was in New York City.
Two people have been arrested and charged with multiple drug and firearm charges in connection to the seizure on October 7 at a Bronx apartment building, prosecutors said in a news release.
Four out of every 10 pills with the synthetic drugfentanyl have been found to contain a potentially lethal dose by the agency and local law enforcement agencies, and thus have been seized at a record rate.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opiate that can be 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin.
The District Attorney of Nassau said that the multi-colored poison specifically designed to lure younger users is the latest threat we face in our fight against the Opioid Epidemic.
The latest overdose death figure remains 32% than it was two years earlier and higher than any other period before November 2021, according to the CDC data. More than 70% of the deaths in the last year were of synthetic opioids, and nearly 30% were of psychostimulants.
But there was no candy inside the boxes marked SweeTarts, Skittles, and Whoppers, the sheriff’s department said. They had the dangerous pills that authorities believe to be thousands.
The authors of the study said that with drug use among teens at a historic low, the overdose deaths are likely not the result of more teens using drugs but of the increasing risks of the drugs themselves.
The pills’ colorful appearance is a “deliberate effort by drug traffickers to drive addiction amongst kids and young adults,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in the alert.
The Los Angeles Police Department said it was investigating multiple overdoses, including one that resulted in a death, at a high school in Hollywood. Students bought what they thought were Percocet pills, investigators said.
After the overdoses, the Los Angeles Unified School District announced its campuses will be equipped with doses of naloxone, a drug used to temporarily reverse the effects of opioid drug overdoses, including from fentanyl.
Fentanyl: Mexico’s Achilles heels vs. the United States’ fenanyl and methamphetamine regimes
Someone tried to go through security screening with some snacks and bags of candy at about 7:30 a.m., the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.
About 12,000 pills were seized by sheriff’s detectives and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents assigned to a drug task force at the airport, authorities said.
“With Halloween approaching, parents need to make sure they are checking their kids candy and not allowing them to eat anything until it has been inspected by them,” the Sheriff’s Department said.
President Biden said this weekend that he wants to launch a “major surge to stop fentanyl production and sale” that’s driving 70,000 fatal overdoses in the U.S. every year.
The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration said during that hearing that her agency is working with other countries to take down the two Mexican drug dealers that make most of the fentanyl entering the U.S.
NPR’s report found that a broad consensus of drug policy experts agrees that strategies being put forward are unrealistic and won’t keep fentanyl off American streets.
“I don’t think there’s any way that we’re going to stop it,” said Representative David Trone, who chairs a bipartisan commission on the issue.
The countries will not be moving the needle if they keep sticking to the old paradigms.
“We work with our Mexican friends with kid gloves on this issue, and it’s fundamentally wrong,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, said at a hearing on fentanyl last week. “I don’t know how many more lives need to be lost before Mexico is engaged.”
The Mexican government is weak enough that it won’t take on the cartels if the U.S. applies more diplomatic pressure.
Sarukhan, Mexico’s former ambassador to the U.S., said only a handful of law enforcement agencies in his country are willing or able to engage with the powerful drug gangs.
“There’s no question that a weak rule of law and endemic corruption are Mexico’s achilles heels,” he said. “That means fentanyl and methamphetamine labs operate in Mexico with almost no pressure.”
The first time the U.S. can do anything about these drugs is when they cross the border, almost always passing through official checkpoints hidden in cars or commercial trucks driven by American citizens.
In recent years, U.S. officials have identified cartel-related corruption at the highest levels of the Mexican government. The man who was the head of Mexico’s equivalent of the FBI was arrested in Plano, Texas, and is being tried in New York City.
At last week’s Senate hearing, the DEA’s Milgram said there’s so little cooperation that her agents can’t take down known fentanyl labs or even get good intel from Mexican cops. She admitted that they weren’t getting information on the seizures offentanyl and precursor chemicals.
China has the chemicals used to make the synthetic opiate. But as disputes over Taiwan and other issues have escalated, the Chinese government has suspended most drug-fighting collaborations with Washington.
“Rather than demonstrate global leadership by engaging in efforts to rein in illicit precursor production and trafficking … Dr. Rahul Gupta, who heads the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, testified during a Senate hearing last week.
Does the U.S. Government Have the Right to Classify Drug Smugglers as Terrorists? Rep. Greg Abbott and Rep. Jeff Trone
Some Republican governors, legislators and state Attorneys general want the U.S. government to designate the Jalisco and Sinaloa Cartels as terrorist organizations.
In September, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a symbolic executive order in his state classifying drug smugglers as terrorists. He said that Texans are falling victim to the Mexican cartels that are producing Fentanyl. It’s time that cartels were treated like terrorists.
Former President Donald Trump considered a terrorist classification for the cartels and reportedly entertained the idea of missile strikes against drug labs inside Mexico.
The Biden administration has resisted that kind of escalation, and Rep. Trone agrees that it would be a grave mistake. “We have the military to conduct raids in Mexico.” [but] it’s not our country,” Trone said. It’s their country. They did not go after the drug traffickers.
“That is the only chance we have,” he said. Without the Chinese government’s help, we can’t win the fight against the smugglers. We have to work on the demand side for education, treatment, and prevention.
The Phoenix Drug Bust: The Case for Eliminating the Sinaloa Drug Trafficking During the Fourth and Fifth Generation Reactions
The sample that you see today is truly staggering. There are over 4.5 million fentanyl pills, over 140 pounds of fentanyl powder, over 135 kilos of cocaine, over 3,000 pounds of methamphetamine, 35 kilos of heroin, 49 firearms and over $2 million in cash,” Interim Tempe Police Chief Josie Montenegro told reporters.
Montenegro said the substances recovered “would be poisoning members of our community, including our youth and vulnerable population,” had the seizures not been made.
Authorities said many people were taken into custody in the bust. There is an ongoing investigation, so authorities do not intend to release the names of those involved.
“I want to be crystal clear, the drugs in this room and the drugs that are flooding Arizona every single day are sourced primarily by one evil as the Sinaloa drug cartel,” she said at the news conference. We are focused on defeating the Sinaloa drug gang. We will not stop.
Oz also praised the efforts of DEA agents and other officers over the last three years. “Their hard work and tenacity is responsible for removing these deadly drugs before they poisoned our family, our friends and our neighborhoods,” she said.