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In Florida, police seized a quantity of fentanyl “that could kill 5 million people” (Subtext photo of bags of white powder)
DRUGS – It is the bogeyman of the American police in the fight against drug trafficking in the USA: fentanyl. And law enforcement in Florida found a very, very large package on October 31, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd announced in a news release discovered by Le Parisien on November 2.
He mentions a record weight loss of 10 kilos. Even if the number seems inconspicuous at first glance, one must realize that this amount is enough “to kill five million people”. In fact, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is up to 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. At the end of 2022, the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reminded: “Just two milligrams of fentanyl, the small amount that fits on the tip of a pencil, is considered a potentially lethal dose.”
It is also one of the opioids that cause the most harm in the United States. Designed to be a more powerful painkiller than morphine, fentanyl was diverted from its original use to become a drug whose use can be fatal. Fentanyl is often sold as a counterfeit prescription drug. Relatively easy to produce and sold at low cost on the black drug market, it is one of the most commonly used narcotics across the Atlantic. It’s as addictive as it is dangerous.
Undercover police officer caught red-handed
In Florida, the investigation into this 10 kilo seizure took weeks, and in the end three people were arrested. They were involved in this drug trade that transported drugs from the Sinaloa Cartel, El Chapo’s, to Compton, California before arriving in Florida.
It was undercover police investigators posing as potential buyers who were able to carry out this raid as part of a special operation. This is how they managed to catch the human traffickers in the act. “They tried to sell us their goods and we got them to arrest them,” said Sheriff Grady Judd.
He said one of the three suspects delivered six kilos of fentanyl to undercover officers before this arrest. With the new transaction he was about to make, the jackpot increased to 10 kilos. “Ten kilos of fentanyl would be enough to kill five million people in the event of an overdose,” the sheriff said.
Most common preventable cause of death in the country
Synthetic opioids such as fentanyl are responsible for two-thirds of the 108,000 overdose deaths officially recorded in the United States in 2021.
And for good reason: Nearly 60% of counterfeit drugs containing fentanyl contain potentially lethal doses, according to DEA testing. Enough to be considered “the deadliest drug threat in the country” by American authorities.
Nevertheless, according to the American Drug Control Agency, in 2022 the amount of fentanyl seized in the United States would have been enough to kill the entire American population, and more: 379 million potentially lethal doses for 331.9 million residents. Enough to exacerbate the opioid crisis that is raging across the country and apparently sparing no one: among 18- to 45-year-olds, overdoses are the nation’s leading preventable cause of death.
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