More fentanyl is seized at the California-Mexico border than any other border region in the country, according to data released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and other federal officials this past week.
The designation isn’t all that surprising, given the region’s longtime status as the predominant gateway for trafficking fentanyl into the United States. But the amount of fentanyl being seized here points to the drug’s increasing hold on the illicit U.S. drug market.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid up to 50 times more potent than heroin that is cheaply manufactured by Mexican drug cartels. It is often pressed into pills — often disguised as prescription opioids — but also laced into other street drugs or sold as powder. Small amounts can be lethal, and rising overdose deaths have been attributed to inaccurate dosing and potent “hot spots” caused by poor mixing methods during the manufacturing process. Often, users don’t know they are taking fentanyl.
In the first nine months of fiscal 2022, from October through June, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized just over 5,000 pounds of fentanyl at ports of entry, checkpoints and during other law enforcement operations in San Diego and Imperial counties. That’s about 60 percent of the total amount seized by border officials nationwide.
In San Diego, seizures have increased by more than 300 percent in the last three years.
The loads themselves have also gotten bigger. No longer content with smuggling small amounts of fentanyl with larger payloads of other drugs, such as methamphetamine, Mexican cartels are now sending massive amounts of fentanyl alone across the border, according to border officials.
Earlier this month, Border Patrol agents stopped a man with 50 pounds of fentanyl inside his vehicle near Murrieta. And in a recent six-day period, CBP and Border Patrol intercepted four separate vehicle loads of fentanyl weighing between 100 and 250 pounds each in Campo and Calexico.
This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.
©2022 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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“Often, users don’t know they are taking fentanyl.”,,,,,,which begs the question, If the President’s son Hunter dies of an unsuspected ingestion of a fentanyl overdose before some of the other STD diseases he has exposed himself to, do you think he might just start to do something about the children of the other hundred thousand voting American parents whose children have already died, while Sleepy Joe just snoozes and sleeps with the Drug cartels? With a death record already approaching the heights of a holocaust, is not the death penalty warranted for any and all who are caught smuggling this death dealing substance into the USA?
Matthew 24:21 – “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?”,,,,,,,Chained to a drug Cartel whose Democrat party is handed legions of the voting socially dependent voters, first hooked upon the drugs, then upon the government handouts brought on by the addiction enslavement to drugs that debilitated the voter’s ability to self-govern and sustain his own existence creating legions of Democrat voters and Democrat party leaders?
I doubt it..
We need to sue California and Biden administration for helping drugs to cross the border. Close the border and build a wall
That’s why i keep saying OPEN UP EVERY BAG Of fentanyl, and BLOW IT ALL RIGHT BACK ACROSS the border.. OR air spray it over cartel territory..