US seizes enough fentanyl to kill all US citizens in 2022

Max Matza BBC News

Posted on 12/21/2022 8:53 AM

Federal drug enforcement agents in the United States say they have seized enough fentanyl to kill the country’s entire population by 2022.

The DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), the federal agency responsible for suppressing and controlling narcotics, claims it has intercepted 379 million potentially fatal doses of fentanyl — just two milligrams of the opioid would be enough to kill.

The federal agency has named the highly addictive substance, which is 50 times more potent than heroin, the deadliest drug threat to the United States.

And he says most fentanyl is smuggled into the country from Mexico.

The DEA says it has seized more than 10,000 pounds of fentanyl, as well as more than 50.6 million fentanyl pills said to resemble various prescription painkillers.

That is more than twice as much as in 2021.

Most of the drugs were massproduced in secret factories in Mexico by the Sinaloa and Jalisco drug cartels, according to the DEA, using chemicals sourced from China.

More than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year, and twothirds of those deaths were attributed to fentanyl, amounting to 182 deaths a day.

The amount of fentanyl seized this year is enough to kill all 330 million Americans, according to the federal Drug Administration.

“The DEA’s top operational priority is to defeat the two Mexican drug cartels the Sinaloa and Jalisco Cartels (CJNG) that are primarily responsible for the fentanyl that is killing Americans today,” said Anne Milgram, head of the DEA .

In addition to fentanyl, the DEA also seized 59,420 kg of methamphetamine, over 1,950 kg of heroin and over 201,395 kg of cocaine.

This text was published at https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional64049702