VIDEO: Why the Cartels Don’t Care about Killing Clients with Fentanyl
And what you can do about it
Last year, U.S. federal investigators seized over 379 million doses of fentanyl – enough to slay more than our 332 million population. Chillingly, the synthetic opiate killed more than one hundred thousand U.S. citizens over the past twelve months.
Fifty times more powerful than heroin and more than one hundred times more potent than morphine, the tiniest amount – equivalent to a few grains of salt is considered a lethal dose. Fentanyl appears in vast swaths of fake pharmaceutical drugs and opioids or party/street drugs emanating from the southern border.
Fentanyl precursors are shipped from China to Mexico, where cartels – namely the almighty Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation – have specialized labs for cooking and intermixing the product into other in-demand substances, without knowing how concentrated the fentanyl might be in a batch of soon-to-sold street stimulants. The drugs are typically transported through legal entry points in the United States and disseminated to networks across all fifty states. They are sheathed in carbon paper to shield them from sniffing dogs and X-ray machines.
But isn’t it bad for business that the robust “filler” power kills many potential customers? So why would cartels keep cooking with fentanyl, given its high fatality rates and the notion that the smallest dot can annihilate?
Economically, it is still a big win. Fentanyl is cheap and incredibly addictive, hooking the user further and enticing them to continue purchasing, with each experimentation a game of Russian roulette for survival. A ten-pound package in Mexico might be worth around $15,000, but the more mileage it traverses, the more its value soars – upwards of $100,000 when it reaches America’s heartland, and far easier to manufacture than heroin and cocaine, which require attention to crops, seasons, harvesting and careful cultivation.
And the cartel profit margins on fentanyl are subsequently massive. While a pound of heroin can produce one thousand tablets, a single ounce of fentanyl can generate the same volume. Moreover, heroin costs around $130,000 per pound, while fentanyl will set a cartel operative back about $5000, and it’s far stronger and more addictive. Manufacturers thus stir in a drop or two of fentanyl into counterfeit pills and other party substances, making them much more habit-forming with no quality control or precise way of gauging if the amount will kill off the customer in the process. As a result, many cooks, often bottom-of-the-totem-pole cartel associates, have died breathing in the power as it roasts over an open flame without medical-grade protective gear.
As the fentanyl epidemic in the U.S. grows, lawmakers have insisted that the governments of China and Mexico must do more to sever the flow lines. However, the leadership to date seems in denial. In March, Mexican President López Obrador claimed his country “does not produce fentanyl” and that the Mexican population does “not have consumption of fentanyl,” pointing to the “social decay” of U.S. society as the sole driver.
“We deeply lament what’s happening in the United States,” Obrador stated at a presser. “But why don’t they fight the problem... and more importantly, why don’t they take care of their youth?”
READ MORE ABOUT FENTANYL AND ITS WAR ON AMERICAN SOIL
The issue is one of many debates among our leadership. Some lawmakers have called to authorize military action, and others have demanded the White House designate the cartels Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), which would significantly broaden federal and state law enforcement capabilities to freeze assets and implicate U.S. citizens viewed as cartel collaborators, theoretically hampering market incentives. But, on the downside, it would jeopardize security and economic cooperation with Mexico – perhaps worsening the problem and illicit behavior – with some experts reinforcing that the designation doesn’t fit as cartel heads are not focused on national security, but on the business of bolstering their bottom lines.
As the policy bickering rages on, as they have done for several years with little progress, you and your children do not need to be sitting ducks. First, education and awareness need to be front and center. These days, there are no drugs or “pharmaceutical” pills outside the mainstream channel safe to consume.
While most deaths are young adults, the fastest-expanding demographic to die are teenagers. And in many cases, they are specifically targeted by unscrupulous dealers in cohort with Mexican cartels, the nation’s supplier of the deadly drug. We’ve seen the emergence of “rainbow fentanyl” – disguised drugs that mimic the appearance of candy – to direct marketing on popular apps from Snapchat to TikTok to further drive addiction among youth.
Yet this is no child’s play. Fentanyl is the most lethal substance circulating in the U.S., and most who die of a “drug overdose” more accurately die of fentanyl poisoning, and are not even aware that the product they are ingesting has been cut with fentanyl.
Further, the nasal spray naloxone is also available over the counter, an intervention tool we can all keep in our bags to save lives.
Nevertheless, addiction is a very real and deadly disease, and users cannot simply go “cold turkey” and suddenly choose to stop. Addressing this aspect of the crisis is where our for-profit insurance system (and Big Pharma themselves, who often spark opioid dependency in the initial phase) fail young Americans and need to be held accountable to do better, thus making treatment – including psychedelics and proven modalities that are off the high-failure-rate beaten path because monopolies haven't found a way of financially benefit – options widely available to all.
So long as the demand is there, Chinese criminal enterprises, in conjunction with the cartels, will continue to keep up the supply, and we must do more on all fronts to stop it.
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