Over 816,000 pills and 328 pounds of cartel fentanyl stopped near Arizona border



On Thursday, the Mexican army announced that its soldiers had seized a shipment of cartel drugs at a checkpoint in Sonora, a northern Mexican state neighboring Arizona. The shipment reportedly contained 1.5 tons of meth, 328 pounds of powdered fentanyl, and 46 barrels containing 816,486 fentanyl pills.

This seizure comes a month after Mexican authorities confiscated approximately 1,200 pounds of fentanyl in the northern city of Culiacan.

Despite such efforts by Mexican authorities, much of the drug still makes it over the U.S. southern border.

On August 6, Customs and Border Protection officers seized 16 pounds of fentanyl at the Ysleta border crossing, valued at $1.4 million.

Last week, Border Patrol agents busted a man in Temecula, California, for 50 pounds of drugs, including seven packages of fentanyl. Temelcula is an hour's drive north of San Diego, reported to be the epicenter of fentanyl smuggling in America.

\u201cNEW: CBP says the San Diego area has become epicenter of fentanyl smuggling. CBP has seized 5,000 lbs of fentanyl there since October, representing 60% of what they\u2019ve seized nationwide.\n\nSan Diego County fentanyl deaths:\n2016: 33\n2021: 817\n\nA staggering 2,375% increase. @FoxNews\u201d
— Bill Melugin (@Bill Melugin) 1660312695

Already this year, Border Patrol has seized 8,425.48 pounds (4.2 tons) of fentanyl.

Fentanyl is reportedly the leading cause of death in Americans ages 18-45. This synthetic drug, first developed as one among a series of opioid painkillers in 1959, is 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times stronger than heroin.

According to Denver7, fentanyl killed 40,010 Americans between April 2020 and April 2021. As a point of comparison, during the same period, 22,442 Americans died in car accidents and 17,114 lost their lives to cancer. Between 2019 and 2021, fentanyl poisoning deaths doubled in 30 U.S. states.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently blamed Washington's "open border policies" for the rise of fentanyl overdoses suffered in his state, which has seen a 4,000% increase in fentanyl seizures over the past three years.

On July 26, Republican Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) similarly suggested that Washington's "inability to secure the border has an adverse impact and contributes directly to our inability to stop the flow of drugs into this country."

The bipartisan Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking issued a final report on February 8, concluding: "Mexico is the principle source of this illicit fentanyl and its analogues today. ... Without a major shift in U.S. policy, more American sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, neighbors and friends will perish."


Fentanyl overdoses become No. 1 cause of death among Americans aged 18-45



The No. 1 killer of Americans aged 18-45 is fentanyl overdoses, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Families Against Fentanyl – a nonprofit with a mission to "fight illicitly manufactured fentanyl" – carried out an analysis of CDC data and discovered that fentanyl overdoses have become the No. 1 cause of death among U.S. adults, ages 18-45.

The analysis notes that between 2020 and 2021, nearly 79,000 Americans in that demographic died of fentanyl overdoses – 37,208 in 2020 and 41,587 in 2021. More Americans in that age range died from fentanyl overdoses than any other cause of death, including suicide, car accidents, cancer, and COVID-19, according to the report.

In all age brackets, fentanyl fatalities have nearly doubled in two years, from 32,754 fatalities in April 2019 to 64,178 deaths in April 2021. The opioid awareness organization Families Against Fentanyl finds that fentanyl, on average, fatally poisons one person every 8.57 minutes.

Buried in the CDC data: \nFentanyl poisoning is now the #1 Cause of Death Among Americans 18-45\n\nSurpassing Suicide, Covid-19 and Car accidentshttps://drive.google.com/file/d/1S0szR2Ua9v0Sr91YhDD7gPrXsDkHxDvP/view?usp=sharing\u00a0\u2026
— Families Against Fentanyl (@Families Against Fentanyl) 1639613120

Illicitly manufactured fentanyl overdose deaths increased in Western, Southern, and Midwestern states between 2019 and 2020, according to a CDC report published on Tuesday.

"The research determined that fentanyl-related overdose fatalities surpassed 1,800 in Western states in the second half of last year, amid the coronavirus pandemic. This amounts to an almost 94 percent increase compared to the same period in 2019," The Hill reported.

"Southern states saw more than 4,300 deaths involving fentanyl between July and December 2020, a nearly 65 percent increase compared to the second half of 2019. Fentanyl-related fatalities rose 33 percent in Midwestern states, reaching beyond 2,000 in the second half of last year," the outlet added.

James Rauh – founder of Families Against Fentanyl – told Fox News, "This is a national emergency. America’s young adults — thousands of unsuspecting Americans — are being poisoned. It is widely known that illicit fentanyl is driving the massive spike in drug-related deaths. A new approach to this catastrophe is needed."

Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid that is similar to morphine but is 50 to 100 times more potent, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

"An overdose occurs when a drug produces serious adverse effects and life-threatening symptoms," the National Institute on Drug Abuse explained. "When people overdose on fentanyl, their breathing can slow or stop. This can decrease the amount of oxygen that reaches the brain, a condition called hypoxia. Hypoxia can lead to a coma and permanent brain damage, and even death."

Between April 2020 and April 2021, there were 100,306 overall drug overdose deaths – the first time the death toll reached six figures in a 12-month period, according to provisional data from the National Center for Health Statistics. In April, overall drug overdose deaths rose a whopping 28% from the year before.

"Synthetic opioids, including illicitly manufactured fentanyls (IMFs), were involved in 64% of >100,000 estimated U.S. drug overdose deaths during May 2020–April 2021," the CDC states.

Overall drug overdose deaths are projected to hit another grim milestone in 2021, with more than 100,000 deaths for the year, according to the CDC.