Fentanyl: The Epidemic That’s Killing Americans

Dozens of people walk disoriented, aimlessly. Others scatter sitting on the floor. It looks like a zombie movie, but the scene is real. are addicted to fentanyl who meet in the neighborhood of Kensington, Philadelphia. There they inject themselves, or consume it in pills, and let the effects take their toll in the middle of the street.

Unfortunately, it is just a sample of what fentanyl is causing in the United States, a public health crisis that has become a priority for the government.

The substance, which is legally sold as a medicine to counteract pain, is very dangerous because just two milligrams is enough to kill a person. It is also 50 times more powerful than heroin and 100 times more than morphine.

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Thanks to the fact that since the 1990s pharmaceutical companies were given more lax permissions for doctors to prescribe it for milder pain, millions of people began to become dependent, creating a snowball that is now out of control.

The traffickers, who saw a gold mine in this situation, began to mix it with cocaine and heroin, to make it even more addictive.

“Fentanyl is the deadliest drug that has ever threatened our nation. It is everywhere, in all 50 states, from metropolitan to rural areas, no community is safe from this poison.”, the director of the DEA, Anne Milgram, had warned in December 2021.

The drug enforcement agency also revealed that more fentanyl was seized in the country in 2022 than would be needed to kill the entire US population.

In fact, the issue is such a priority for Washington that it was one of the main items on the agenda that the president Joe Biden brought to Mexico during the North American Leaders Summit, to agree with his counterpart, Andres Manuel Lopez Obradorways to face the crisis, given that the Mexican cartels are the ones that produce the drug and traffic it.

“In the United States they are very concerned because fentanyl has become a drug that can now be acquired with any application on the cell phone. So, you hire a courier service and it can get you to your house”, Doctor in Political Science Arturo Ponce Urquiza, professor at UNAM and Universidad Anahuac, comments to El Comercio from Mexico.

Posters

Since synthetic drugs are easier to produce and traffic, they have become more profitable. For this reason, the Mexican cartels –especially the one in Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation– they now dedicate a good part of their efforts, with fentanyl in the lead.

Ponce Urquiza, who is also a security expert, recalls that since the administration of Vicente Fox (2000-2006) the arrival of fentanyl transfer through the Port of Manzanillo, in the Mexican Pacific, has been identified. “The cartels stole trucks that brought drugs with fentanyl or bought large batches, causing shortages in some regions of the country. So they would hire expert chemists and ‘disarm’ the drugs to get the fentanyl out and add it to these new drugs, giving them enormous potency.”Explain.

US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents seize fentanyl. (AFP photo)

According to the DEA, the sinaloa cartel dominates Arizona and California corridors to ship fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana to the US.

For this reason, the recent capture in Mexico of Ovid Guzman, the son of ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, has been important for the United States, the same that materialized days before Joe Biden’s arrival in the country, in a kind of gift for Washington. However, despite the fact that he is accused of being responsible for the cartel’s focus on fentanyl, his arrest will not dramatically decrease traffic from Mexico to the United States.

“Ovidio is the commercial image of racking, but it is his brothers, the so-called ‘Chapitos’, who are the big operators. But even without them, there is the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel.”points out Ponce Urquiza.

Chinese chemists

Although the Mexican cartels are the ones that, above all, bring the fentanyl to its northern neighbor, the United States authorities warned last year that four Chinese companies are the ones that sell the precursors –chemical elements necessary for its manufacture– of the drug. drugs through the Internet, even via WhatsApp, making the fight against this scourge even more complicated.

“Indeed, many of these precursors come from China, especially from a city that everyone now knows as COVID-19: Wuhan. There are the most important pharmaceutical laboratories in the country, and these chemical elements leave China in ships and arrive at Mexican ports.”details.

With so many factors to consider, the fight against the trafficking and consumption of fentanyl becomes more and more uphill. Meanwhile, addicts will continue to walk the streets like zombies, and dealers will continue to search for more profitable and deadly substances.

Source: Elcomercio