In 2022, US authorities seized more than that Fentanyl Enough to kill the entire American population, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) said Tuesday, recalling the deadly danger posed by this synthetic opiate. The DEA said it seized 50.6 million counterfeit pills containing fentanyl and 4.5 tons of fentanyl powder this year. It is equivalent “Over 379 million hazardous doses”, she said. According to the agency, fentanyl, which caused only a small fraction of overdose deaths a decade ago, now does “Country’s Deadliest Drug Menace”.
50 times more potent than heroin
“It’s a synthetic opiate that’s 50 times more potent than heroin. Two milligrams of fentanyl, a small amount in the tip of penicillin, is considered a lethal dose.”, she said. According to official data, it was the leading cause of more than 107,000 overdose deaths in the United States from July 2021 to June 2022. Cheap and relatively easy to produce, fentanyl has replaced prescription opiates and heroin in the illicit drug market.
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According to the DEA, the main suppliers of fentanyl to the United States are the Mexican cartels of Sinaloa and Jalisco. Their fentanyl is made by chemicals in Mexico “Mostly from China”, she said. According to the same source, some are distributed in the form of counterfeit drugs such as Percocet, OxyContin and Xanax. About 60% of counterfeit fentanyl-containing prescriptions tested by the DEA contain lethal levels of fentanyl.
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