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The Fentanyl Menace
“At the tap of a buyer’s smartphone, Chinese chemical sellers will air-ship fentanyl ingredients door-to-door to North America,” found a Reuters investigative report in July. Can anything be done?
“We bought everything needed to make $3 million worth of fentanyl,” the explosive investigative report from Reuters began. The next sentence was devastating: “All it took was $3,600 and a web browser.”
“At the tap of a buyer’s smartphone, Chinese chemical sellers will air-ship fentanyl ingredients door-to-door to North America,” found the investigative team consisting of Maurice Tamman, Laura Gottesdiener, and Stephen Eisenhammer on July 25, 2024. “Reuters purchased enough to make 3 million pills. Such deals are astonishingly easy — and reveal how drug traffickers are eluding efforts to halt the deadly trade behind the fentanyl crisis.”
The report’s authors discovered the same disquieting drug-trade underpinnings that investigative journalist Peter Schweitzer exposed in his recent bestseller, “Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans.”
In recent years, the United States has found itself embroiled in a harrowing battle against a deadly new adversary in the War On Drugs: fentanyl. This synthetic opioid, up to 100 times more potent than morphine, is wreaking havoc from coast to coast, claiming thousands of lives annually and presenting a formidable challenge to public health and law enforcement agencies alike.
Fentanyl is proving to be a terrifying hydra, unlike anything U.S. authorities have ever confronted before. Part of the problem is the ease with which would-be drug manufacturers can obtain fentanyl-making chemicals.
Reuters reports on its successful effort to obtain fentanyl’s key ingredients:
“Transactions like this are part of the biggest upheaval in the global narcotics trade since the war on drugs began half a century ago.”
Fentanyl’s insidious rise began in the early 2010s, infiltrating the illicit drug market with devastating efficiency. Often laced with heroin, cocaine, or methamphetamine, this silent killer soon gave rise to a staggering increase in overdose deaths.
