How does fentanyl get into the US?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg93nn1e6go

by tartoran • 1 year ago

83 167 1 year ago

bbc.com

jf22• 1 year ago

It's amazing the US started a trade war over 74,000 deaths from Fentanyl when heart disease causes 10x more deaths.

bigdict• 1 year ago

Have you seen the RFK confirmation hearing?

knowaveragejoe• 1 year ago

It was never about a perceived moral crusade against fentanyl and addiction at large. It's only ever been about throwing our weight around to disrupt alliances and institutions with the goal of destroying American soft power.

wavefunction• 1 year ago

it's just political theater mostly to provide the appearance of "doing something" while also providing a new excuse for why high prices are still high and continue to rise

certain political figures and their supporters just need a story to tell, it doesn't have to be particularly accurate or even coherent for their purposes

moate• 1 year ago

Ahh yes, that was definitely the core reason and not just something sensational to put out as the cause. We definitely care about drug deaths in this country wink.

Feels like the main reasons you institute tariffs, historically, is to 1- control the production/flow of goods and 2- to raise money for other endeavors. As tariffs are a much more difficult form of taxation for a payer to track (they're not getting a bill the way they do on income/real estate taxes, it's being hidden in the cost of the good) they're also a great way to obfuscate "raising taxes" if you're running on a platform of, say "I'm going to institute the largest tax break in American history".

robertlagrant• 1 year ago

People voted for fewer drug deaths, and it looks as though the looming tariffs have stirred a drug-death-preventing response, which has paused the tariffs[0]. It seems as though people are getting what they voted for so far?

[0] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-discuss-tariffs-canadi...

leptons• 1 year ago

As tariffs are a much more difficult form of taxation for a payer to track (they're not getting a bill the way they do on income/real estate taxes, it's being hidden in the cost of the good)

Oh no, it's very easy. When I sell my product, I will be including the exact amount the buyer is paying above what is normal due to tariffs. The tariffs are very well expressed on the purchase price of the parts that go into the product, so it's very easy for me to add up the tariffs and tell the buyer how much more trump is demanding they pay for the product.

mvdtnz• 1 year ago

You may not care about drug deaths, but many people do.

sashank_1509• 1 year ago

A bad comparison. Fentanyl deaths are fully avoidable, heart diseases have existed forever.

BudaDude• 1 year ago

They are also for the most part avoidable

lnxg33k1• 1 year ago

If you start to ban cigarettes, mcdonalds and similar, also many heart diseases can be avoided

bluGill2• 1 year ago

There are things we can do that people are not doing. However plenty of people who do eat well and exercise die of heart diseases and we don't know how to stop that.

culi5• 1 year ago

Point taken, but archeologists and anthropologists have known for a while now that cardiovascular disease is virtually absent in non-industrial societies.

And we also know there's a ton more that could be done to lessen how common heart disease is

aylmao6• 1 year ago

Working on US healthcare affordability would avoid plenty of these (and many other) deaths.

tayo425• 1 year ago

get rid of fentanyl and how many go back to overdosing on heroine and oxycodone etc...

slothtrop9• 1 year ago

Heart disease is more preventable than given credence. Prevention is the best medicine.

Vehicle deaths are also avoidable.

Der_Einzige• 1 year ago

But that war (against metabolic syndrome) is already won because of Ozempic/Wegovy/Zepbound. Give it 20 years.

ge965• 1 year ago

It seems bad to fix a problem that can be addressed by self control. It's like making a bulky un-aerodynamic car go farther by adding a bigger engine/more fuel. But I understand too when you're 100s of lbs overweight it can seem impossible to change. I work out myself but my motivation is to get laid vs. actually embracing health I still binge eat for fun.

I think Ozempic doesn't have crazy side effects other than the face? Could be wrong

Edit: Regarding the topic at hand, I either don't drink or binge drink so I'm no saint same with driving fast.

bhaney2• 1 year ago

If we could put tariffs on heart disease we would

gberger• 1 year ago

We can, though? A sugar tax.

from-nibly• 1 year ago

We don't profit from fentanyl deaths.

hammock• 1 year ago

We grow that at home. (Corn, soy and sugar)

In fact the tariffs will help fund the farm bills.

culi5• 1 year ago

US agriculture is already arguably the most heavily subsidized in the world

readthenotes1• 1 year ago

Why don't we ban automobiles since they cause 41,000 deaths per year?

bluGill2• 1 year ago

A lot more people use automobiles. Hard drugs are used, but very few people use them, many have never tried them.

coderc• 1 year ago

74,000 is the approximate number for just 2023. The number was even higher in 2022. It's not "just" 74,000 deaths.

nomel• 1 year ago

~180k from 2015-2022 [1]. If the fraction of fentanyl is similar for 2023 and 2024 [2], then the number would be over 300k (I don't see direct numbers for 2023 or 2024).

[1] https://usafacts.org/articles/are-fentanyl-overdose-deaths-r...

[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/overdose-deaths-a...

michaelt• 1 year ago

If you think that's a surprise, consider the fact the US responded to 3000 deaths on September 11th with a 20 year, multi-trillion-dollar pair of wars that killed far more than 3000 people.

It turns out there are a lot of concerns beyond than the number of bodies.

jollyllama• 1 year ago

What's the YLL stats on fent vs heart disease?

scythe• 1 year ago

Generally we are more concerned when people die at 40 than at 80. The latter is considered "normal". There are a few ways that the epidemiologists try to quantify this notion — DALYs or QALYs.

Fentanyl takes people young. And it's new. Those characteristics make it a serious concern.

invalidOrTaken• 1 year ago

wait til you hear what they did in 2001!

polotics• 1 year ago

One usually measures years of life-expectancy lost. Your heart attacks victims may well be 80 year old with 5 average years left, you need more than ten of those to account from one 20 year old incautious party girl...

fngjdflmdflg• 1 year ago

Last I looked at this (in a different context, a few years ago,) I read that most heart disease deaths are essentially natural deaths. Someone has to die from something and heart disease is one of those things. (Eating worse could perhaps be making people die earlier by one or two years on average.)

Some data (not exactly the same I found last time, but seems to still be accurate as I recalled it):

About 82% of people who die of coronary heart disease are 65 or older[0]

See also the CDC's list of deaths by cause by age group:

For 65 years and over, Diseases of heart is ranked 1st (531,583 deaths in 2019). For 45–64 years, it is 1st in 1980 and second in 2019 (111,975). For 25–44 years it is 4th (13,994) and 15–24 years it is 5th (1,223 and 872 total deaths for 1980 and 2019 respectively).[1]

I'm also pretty sure many (most?) drug overdoses manifest as cardiac arrest and are probably included in "Diseases of the heart:"

Drug overdose is a leading cause of cardiac arrest and is currently the second leading cause of overall injury-related fatality in the United States.[2]

[0] https://memorialhermann.org/services/specialties/heart-and-v...

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2020-2021/LCODAge.pdf

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3399948/

inglor_cz2• 1 year ago

If victims of Fentanyl die much younger than victims of heart disease, the total # of lost years of life can be of the same order.

I remember reading that elimination of heart disease would increase life expectancy by some 5,5 years. Not nothing, but it indicates that most people die of heart disease at a relatively old age, when something else would kill them quite soon.

OTOH if a Fentanyl victim loses 40 or 50 years of potential life, that is a major loss for society as a whole. Kids may not be born etc.

dragonwriter• 1 year ago

If victims of Fentanyl die much younger than victims of heart disease, the total # of lost years of life can be of the same order.

It can be even without that if you are looking at quality-adjusted life years and not just raw life years.

binary1325• 1 year ago

If killdrones were murdering 74,000 random Americans a year during their morning commute, you’d better believe people would be prioritizing it over heart failure.

spiderfarmer3• 1 year ago

Imposing tariffs, further impoverishing the poor, in order to not show compassion for your own citizens? That doesn’t just sound backwards, it just is. The fentanyl crisis is just being used as an excuse to impose the tariffs. By now it’s well known that Trump desperately wants to proof his professor wrong and if the world has to burn, so be it.

tivert• 1 year ago

By now it’s well known that Trump desperately wants to proof his professor wrong

By now it it's well known that globalization is for a fantasy world that doesn't exist, and people should stop listening so much to economics professors. Trade barriers need to go up to re-orient things. Unfortunately, Trump is unlikely to do it competently.

spiderfarmer3• 1 year ago

You guys tried everything but the things other countries that do well are doing. But hey, let’s try to stop globalization as a single country.

janalsncm6• 1 year ago

A 10% tariff on China won’t stop globalization. Even an 100% tariff wouldn’t. American goods aren’t 10% more expensive, a lot of them are 10x more expensive.

Look for American made kitchen knives. You will be lucky to spend less than $2k on a block of Made in USA knives. Meanwhile you can get a pretty good set made in China for under $200.

If you wanted American companies to compete, you would need a 10x tariff to make that $200 knife set cost $2000.

henvic• 1 year ago

Ending the war on drugs would be a wise choice. Treat drug addicts as people with a health issue instead of making the entire society pay for it due to the fact that the druggies pay the cartels to smuggle drugs to them and all the consequences of the drug wars...

Tariffs are just taxes that will destroy the economy.

pton_xd• 1 year ago

Portland tried that in 2020 by decriminalizing drug possession.

They reversed course and recently passed a law to recriminalize possession. I think its the right move. Downtown turned into a very unpleasant place.

culi5• 1 year ago

It wasn't Portland. Voters in Oregon as a whole passed Measure 110 in 2020 that replaced criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of drugs with $100 fines.

Then in April of 2024 House Bill 4002 made possession once again a misdemeanor but kept most of the other provisions of Measure 110 and still focuses on "deflecting" people who possess out of the criminal justice system and into treatment programs.

So Measure 110 is still mostly in effect. They just made it so you do in fact have something on your record if you're caught with possession.

bdcravens4• 1 year ago

The "war on drugs" has been waged for more than 40+ years. It seems like it takes more than a few years, most of which was during the worst public health crisis in generations, to succeed.

Most incarceration is about helping those who aren't the ones suffering (evidenced by "... a very unpleasant place"). Not attacking you for your comment, just pointing out the paradigm we as a society have.

be_erik2• 1 year ago

Decriminalization is step the first step. The obvious result is going to be that a problem _sometimes_ hidden becomes more prevalent. What failed in the Portland experiment was a lack of stable housing coupled with a public space system that was never designed for use by those afflicted by addiction.

The deterioration of our public spaces is not caused by our drug epidemic, it's the logical outcome when the state fails to provide services to the most vulnerable. People literally have nowhere else to go.

tayo425• 1 year ago

decriminalizing is a half assed way to try to help. The only issue with drug use isnt that you'll get arrested for possesion.

You need access to safe and clean drugs. Support systems need to be in place. The look of downtown isn't the only way to measure success. How many people aren't dying because there isn't a stigma around drug use, where clean and predictable drug doses (like alcohol) can be had, drug testing kits, safe pieces to use with, safe places to be etc

drpfenderson• 1 year ago

Seemingly, the major failure there was having the one part (decriminalization) without the other - crucial - part (treatment and support).

The support and treatment structures have remained essentially unchanged since Measure 110 passed, with holdups to funding and logistics at almost every level of the state's government. Oregon was already ranked almost dead last in addiction treatment, and that hasn't budged. I can't see how it would work without this other critical piece.

Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) has some good coverage about this failure from the first couple years (which was never really rectified): https://www.opb.org/article/2022/05/24/oregons-measure-110-i...

Also worth noting is that research has found no association with with Measure 110 and crime, and crime has been steadily falling since the measure was passed. (along with most other metro areas in the USA) https://www.opb.org/article/2024/01/24/portland-crime-violen...

aylmao6• 1 year ago

I haven't been to Portland since 2018, but I have been to and seen LA and San Francisco downtowns. They didn't decriminalize, but their downtowns are pretty unpleasant too.

I wonder to what degree Portland is a product of its local policy (like this decriminalization/recriminalization) vs the national trends that are seen across the USA.

slothtrop9• 1 year ago

Decriminalization seems to lead to negative outcomes in every respect, including prostitution. I expect legalization is what's required as that would allow for optimal regulation and tax.

You could go the way of East Asia. That would be very difficult, but easy access to narcotics could lead to disastrous results.

ein0p• 1 year ago

I once saw a drug addict shoot up what looked like heroin in plain view of a police officer in Seattle. The officer did absolutely nothing. Needless to say downtown Seattle is also an extremely unpleasant place. In fact I'd say Seattle as a whole is gradually turning into a SF-like shithole. The only real solution to this is to make the decision makers experience the consequences of their luxury beliefs. How to do that in Seattle is not entirely clear, aside from that solitary case when a bunch of CHOP thugs marched to the mayor's home in 2020.

fortylove• 1 year ago

This sentiment peaked in popularity in urban areas ~4 years ago. Since then I've noticed support for this position slowly eroding, and my hypothesis is that the general population has slowly had enough interactions with someone who is on fent.

binary1325• 1 year ago

it’s always a little weird to me how out of touch this comments section is, especially on the topic of certain social ills that people wish to normalize. I really think the constant pressure on these subjects has been counterproductive to that goal.

throw0101a2• 1 year ago

Tariffs are just taxes that will destroy the economy.

Tariffs are taxes and subsidies. See "Tariffs Give U.S. Steelmakers a Green Light to Lift Prices":

Executives from U.S. steel companies were enthusiastic backers of the 2018 tariffs and have urged Trump to deploy them again in his second term. They have called for the elimination of tariff exemptions and duty-free import quotas, saying those carve-outs allow unfairly low-price steel to enter the U.S. and undermine the steel market.

[…]

Higher prices for imported steel are often followed by domestic suppliers raising their own prices, which then get passed through supply chains, manufacturing executives said. For consumers already reeling from rising retail prices and inflation, pricier steel and aluminum could further lift costs for durable goods like appliances and automobiles, as well as consumer products with aluminum packaging, such as canned beverages.
“The issue with tariffs is everybody raises their prices, even the domestics,” said Ralph Hardt, owner of Belleville International, a Pennsylvania-based manufacturer of valves and components used in the energy and defense industries. Steel and aluminum are Belleville’s largest expenses.

* https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/trump-tariffs-mexico-canad...

So tariffs are taxes in the sense that consumers are paying higher prices. But they are subsidies in that domestic companies don't have as much pressure on prices and can get more money.

So if you want to help a particular industry might as well just go with subsidies directly instead of the taxation add-on as well.

bdcravens4• 1 year ago

This is something that is ignored: the companies not affected by tariffs will raise their prices. Any intimation that they will keep prices the same is disingenuous. Leaving money on the table would be anti-capitalist.

tayo425• 1 year ago

People making decisions around drugs have no experience with drugs and users.

They just get hysterical information about the extreme cases and extrapolate to everyone.

People just need to be supported through hard times and experimentation phases so they come out the other side.

So many people eventually get clean, stop using and get back to having productive lives.

I saw so many unnecessary deaths, friends with potential, die, because we don't want to help and support them. Overdoses are not needed.These aren't street people that make up so much of the hysteria, just middle class normal people that had their life go a certain way.

People don't want fentanyl or fake drugs in general. Access to drugs that can be measured are safe. Opiods are safe, doctors give fentanyl to patients constantly, and you don't come out of surgeries a opioid addict because you got a dose one times.

The hysterical people need to learn there place in the discussion on drugs and get to the side.

bdcravens4• 1 year ago

People making decisions around drugs have no experience with drugs and users.

Just wait until you see who's making decisions about women's health.

amunozo2• 1 year ago

Maybe the problem is doctors giving fentanyl to patients constantly.

kfrzcode• 1 year ago

The point of waging war on concepts or categories is so they never have an end.

twic• 1 year ago

Despite this, the trade in other chemicals involved in the manufacturing of fentanyl - some of which can have legitimate purposes - remain uncontrolled, as those involved in the trade find new ways to evade the law.

What are these chemicals, and what are their other uses? Which of them don't have any other uses?

Beijinger• 1 year ago

Phenethyl bromide5 Propionyl chloride4 4-Anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine (4-ANPP)2 N-phenethyl-4-piperidone (NPP)2 Propionic anhydride2 Sodium borohydride1

bdcravens4• 1 year ago

One thing this article doesn't cover is WHO is doing the trafficking, and in most cases, it's Americans.

https://www.ussc.gov/research/quick-facts/fentanyl-trafficki...

Most seizures happen at checkpoints or vehicle searches.

https://www.cato.org/blog/fentanyl-smuggled-us-citizens-us-c...

coliveira3• 1 year ago

Also who is coordinating this trafficking in the US? They make it believe that there is only the border smuggling and the retail sale problem. From the US point of view, NOBODY is handling and managing the drug business in US soil.

mtlmtlmtlmtl3• 1 year ago

If you want to stop the flow of hyperpotent opioids like fentanyl and nitazenes, legalise opium and heroin. As drugs, the only advantage of these compounds is that their potency makes them easier and cheaper to smuggle. I've asked a lot of opioid addicts about this and not one of them has described an all-things-equal preference for these drugs. I'm sure some people do exist, but they're likely a very small minority. Most people don't even know what they're using, they just take whatever's available to get a fix.

This is a completely artificial problem, created by the war on drugs. Just like the waves of PMMA deaths in europe caused by safrole seizures. Western nations have no one to blame for this but themselves.

be_erik2• 1 year ago

This rings true with my experiences. The people who I've known to become addicted usually started with something prescribed and then graduated to heroin. When heroin became harder to find, smuggle in, or too expensive, fentanyl happily stepped up to meet demand.

Addicts literally carry around fent testing kits so they can _avoid_ this synthetic opioid.

flustercan• 1 year ago

Addicts literally carry around fent testing kits so they can _avoid_ this synthetic opioid.

Its my understanding that heroin and street pharmaceuticals aren't really around anymore. Its ALL fentanyl now and everyone knows it.

dylan6042• 1 year ago

Addicts literally carry around fent testing kits so they can _avoid_ this synthetic opioid.

Choosy addicts choose...is something I never thought I'd read. I'd suggest they weren't addicting right if they are choosy. When you can find your fix of choice, you just fix with what's available.

If your comment were accurate, fent sales would plummet and the problem would fix itself. This is clearly not the case.

nradov• 1 year ago

That's true to an extent. But we can also reduce the incidence of opioid addiction by prescribing them only for really severe pain, and in smaller quantities. This is already happening. Back in 2007 an oral surgeon gave me a prescription (which I never filled) after a minor procedure but today that probably wouldn't happen.

slothtrop9• 1 year ago

Is opium considered the least harsh/dangerous variant?

vlovich123• 1 year ago

We did legalise opium by way of oxycontin and I'm not sure that helped reduce the scope of the problem. Arguably a lot more people got hooked on opium than ever before because something legalized has less stigma attached and is more easily accessible. Society has waffled repeatedly on the legality of opium and the effects of opium are a bit different than less destructive narcotics where legalization makes more sense.

slothtrop9• 1 year ago

Oxycontin was overprescribed for pain, it's not available for recreational use.

Possibly it's just too potent for legalization to be viable.

gedy• 1 year ago

Arguably a lot more people got hooked on opium than ever before because something legalized has less stigma attached

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I know that by the 80s heroin had a bad stigma attached to it even by other drug users, and it was rarely seen in the circles I knew. Coke, pot and meth did not have that at the time.

motorest• 1 year ago

If you want to stop the flow of hyperpotent opioids like fentanyl and nitazenes, legalise opium and heroin.

Why is the solution always either "let them take drugs" or "don't let them take drugs"?

To fix the problem, shouldn't people be asking why they feel the need to take drugs to start with?

The same goes for alcohol abuse.

SquibblesRedux• 1 year ago

I'll drink to that!

Seriously, it feels like society has drifted too far away from the idea of small, local communities. So much of modern life separates people either physically or technologically. Though I would like to blame modern marketing and consumerism, I think these problems have been brewing for centuries.

From a sociological perspective, I do see the benefits of small conservative communities that effectively serve as a guarding or protective mechanism, shielding the more vulnerable from potentially destructive influences.

itchyouch• 1 year ago

100%.

There is already some compelling anecdata that warrants studying.

Rat park is one, and the doctor who prescribed heroin in the 60s is another.

The jist of it was that addicts stopped abusing when there was something better to live for. In the absence of community, opportunity, and hope, abuse abounded.

The reality of some people's experiences though is that while euphoric in the beginning, long term use leads to an unpleasurable mental haze. The lack of clarity becomes its own hell.

----

The potential solution is likely unpopular and likely difficult to implement. Investing into communities that promote community along with incentives for economically depressed areas to be rebuilt, IMO would likely reduce opioid abuse.

But that's not nearly as popular as the moral displacement schadenfreude the people get by being able to point the finger at the drug abusers.

mtlmtlmtlmtl3• 1 year ago

That's very true. The drug issue is a very complex problem, and I was only addressing a very narrow aspect of it, namely the root cause for the proliferation of hyperpotent opioids in black/grey markets.

The legal side of it is just that; one side. It's important, yes, but just legalising opium won't automagically solve the opioid crisis on its own. We also need to address societal causes of opioid addiction. At least in the US, overprescription from doctors corrupted by big pharma(especially purdue), is one major contributing factor that's been thoroughly exposed in recent years. Obviously the role of money in medicine needs to be changed.

The deeper issue though is that more people are becoming vulnerable to developing addiction. Speaking as an addict myself, one of the root causes of addiction at an individual level can be untreated mentall illness. Drugs can often provide a temporary reprieve from mental illness, and unfortunately is often more easily available than good treatment options. In many western countries, funding for mental health treatment programs has been reduced. This is contributing to a rise in unmanaged mental health issues.

I think spending a ton more on mental health, especially in youth, is essential to reducing the prevalence of addiction.

Other issues include poverty, unemployment, housing. The thread through all of this is that more people lead miserable lives, and that makes drugs more tempting.

But let me circle back to the legalisation issue and why it's so important. The main health risks with opioids are overdose in the short term, infections(hepatitis, HIV, endocarditis) from dirty needles and organ damage from dirty drugs in the longer term. Legalisation can address all of these things. Any addict will tell you the main reason overdoses are so common is there's no consistency to the potency of their drugs. Even when it was still heroin, the constant battle with LE meant the purity would fluctuate wildly. Add to that synergistic adulterants, and now these hyperpotent drugs, and you get addicts dying like flies. Legalising the drugs would allow regulating them and providing consistent dosages, eliminating harmful adulterants, and mandating that doses be sold alongside clean user equipment. This would greatly limit the health impact of these drugs on its users. It's obvious that recovering from addiction would be a lot easier if your body hadn't been destroyed by it before you even enter a treatment programme.

In addition, remember what I said about funding for mental health declining? How much money is spent futilely fighting the war on drugs? I haven't done the tedious task of adding up federal, state and police budgets for the US, but the budget for the DEA alone is in the billions, so it's safe to assume once you do the math it'll be in the tens of billions for LE alone. And that's without accounting for the courts, prisons, and all the money being funneled away from the legitimate economy by criminal gangs. This is money that should be spent elsewhere. On mental health and addiction treatment, housing, social programmes. But instead it's essentially being piled up and lit on fire.

So at least for me, that's why I keep saying "let them take drugs".

dyauspitr• 1 year ago

Dumbest thing I’ve heard. You’d have large swathes of the population (at least 15%) addicted to them within the year. Any country where it’s freely available ends up having a large number of addicts (20th century China, modern day Afghanistan and Pakistan etc.)

mtlmtlmtlmtl3• 1 year ago

This argument is too dismissive for me to bother spending time on it except to say this: try to think about other factors than just availability, because it's not the only thing that matters.

Here's an exercise for you to do just that. Alcohol is legal and extremely available in the west. It has an even stronger addiction potential than opioids do. And the majority of people in the west drink at varying rates. But the rate of addiction is generally under 5%(in the west). Why do you think that is?

31carmichael• 1 year ago

If I were to become a drug addict, I would also choose opium and heroin. I do see interviews on YouTube with folks who seek out fentanyl. But as other commenters mention, this may be a minority, and likely more so if safe and pure opium and heroin were accessible.

aylmao6• 1 year ago

Despite this, the trade in other chemicals involved in the manufacturing of fentanyl - some of which can have legitimate purposes - remain uncontrolled, as those involved in the trade find new ways to evade the law.

From a purely economic perspective, it just sounds like local production will replace foreign imports if the US does manage to stop fentanyl from entering from abroad.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 1 year ago

By citing seizure numbers and mentioning nothing else about each respective border, this article and other news reports I am seeing seem to imply or suggest that that seizures are a direct representation of how much contraband is crossing a border. That's possible. It's also possible that seizures are a representation, at least in part, of something else. For example, the success of border authorities in detecting and confiscating contraband. Authorities on one border might be more more successful than authorities on another border. The frequency and amounts of seizures might not be indicative of the total amount of contraband that is crossing a particular border undetected. The seizure rate might be related to geographical or other characteristics of the border, for example.

aylmao6• 1 year ago

I agree. I'd expand this by noting this doesn't only apply to borders, but the whole territory too. The article does note:

[...] the trade in other chemicals involved in the manufacturing of fentanyl - some of which can have legitimate purposes - remain uncontrolled, as those involved in the trade find new ways to evade the law.

One has to imagine there's local manufacturing of fentanyl too, and one has to wonder the magnitude of it.

badosu• 1 year ago

It's revealing how many sub designs they found on south american jungles, but few actually found in traffic or on the targets coast.

janalsncm6• 1 year ago

It is possible the data is biased by enforcement ability. However, the difference is huge. Last year only 0.2% of fentanyl was seized at the northern border and 98% at the southern border.

kalupa• 1 year ago

I do find it interesting that the articles almost never mention the direction the drugs were moving in …

refurb2• 1 year ago

Not sure why this is downvoted.

It’s the classic “put more armor on the areas with holes for planes that make it back from bombing raids”.

Inspections at the respective borders is absolutely not equal as anyone who has travelled by land through both borders. A lot more contraband comes through the South border and much more enforcement is there as well.

sudosysgen5• 1 year ago

This is easily refuted by looking at flows in the opposite direction, which show large amounts of fentanyl going from the US to Canada.

coliveira3• 1 year ago

Drug trafficking has little to do with the border issue, since you cannot really do anything about it when you have thousands of miles of border to secure. The issue here is how much corruption exists in the US and how little it does against the really big criminals who control traffic.

The justice system concentrates only on putting small vendors behind bars (usually black people), but they're not the ones making real profits. I guarantee you don't know any big drug traffickers operating inside the US that were sent to jail. When you hear about big bosses it is always some guy outside the US, but the ones operating inside the country are all protected in one way or another. They're all laughing and buying mansions all over the country. This corruption is what the US should be concentrating on if they want to stop drug trafficking.

Retric7• 1 year ago

Thousands of miles of border isn’t actually the issue here. How many people are crossing the Korean DMZ each year without South Korea noticing?

Adjusted for population size and it’s roughly half the length of the US/Mexico land border and it’s designed for military incursion via tanks not just people in a pickup truck.

Similarly the amount of money spent on inspecting imports is well under 1% of the total value of said imports. It’s possible to inspect literally every package crossing the border, we just don’t want to.

0cf8612b2e1e• 1 year ago

I do not think it makes sense to scale national borders based on population size. It is what it is, you can choose to invest resources on the entire length, but there is no mathematical averaging out.

For anyone else that was curious, the Korean DMZ is 150 miles long. US Mexico border is 1950.

coliveira3• 1 year ago

Your comparison doesn't even make sense. SK and NK have no relation and no border crossings. It is the easiest border to patrol.

beart• 1 year ago

There is no commerce crossing the DMZ. There are no tourists crossing the DMZ. Hundreds of millions of people cross the southern US border every year. You cannot compare these two borders in any realistic way.

Edit: also, landmines

verdverm3• 1 year ago

Most drugs enter the country through legal ports of entry, not in the gaps. Most drugs are also brought back across by US citizens (~90%)

Here is one such study: https://immigrationforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/llic...

slothtrop9• 1 year ago

So, they were half-right since that's tantamount to "corruption in the US"

southernplaces7• 1 year ago

I guarantee you don't know any big drug traffickers operating inside the US that were sent to jail.

Feel like putting forward a source for that claim, or did you simply decide it's true because you think it sounds true?

Just to name a few examples: The Flores brothers, Frank Lucas, the five families of NYC, George Jung. All of these were heavily prosecuted and if they weren't major drug traffickers in the U.S, then no one is.

motohagiography• 1 year ago

it makes more sense when you look at the LD-50 of fentanyl vs. any other synthetic substance, and it's hard to see it as anything other than a WMD.

it's a security issue and municipalities and public health exploit it to "manage" for increased bureaucracy and funding. whenever they want more federal or state money, they turn the crisis tap on or off. public agencies all benefit from rising poverty, and where they can't create it with lax enforcement, they import it.

stopping the flow of drugs cuts off a huge source of bureaucratic crisis leverage, and local political corruption funding, that both poison the entire system of institutions. it's difficult to find a coherent moral case against a radical crackdown on fentanyl for those reasons.

binary1325• 1 year ago

“They downvoted him because he told them the truth.”

janalsncm6• 1 year ago

According to CBP, last year there were only 43 pounds of fentanyl seized on the northern border. The problem is almost entirely a Southern border problem. So it seems crazy to punish Canada. Also India is responsible for many precursors but are not named.

refurb2• 1 year ago

“Only 43 pounds” or 9.7M fatal doses.

janalsncm6• 1 year ago

Yes, and 4.8 billion fatal doses were intercepted at the US-Mexico border. Fentanyl is potent.

rstuart4133• 1 year ago

Now try adjusting for population. Here are the figures from the story:

In the first 10 months of 2024, the Canadian border service reported seizing 10.8lb (4.9kg) of fentanyl entering from the US, while US Border Patrol intercepted 32.1lb (14.6kg) of fentanyl coming from Canada.

So the US is exporting 242 doses per 1000 Canadians to Canada. Canada is exporting 84 does per 1000 Americans to the US.

janalsncm6• 1 year ago

The point is that it is almost entirely manufactured in Mexico using Chinese and Indian precursor chemicals. The amount crossing the US-Canada border is negligible by comparison.

downut2• 1 year ago

133 comments and the Sackler family has yet to be mentioned. I don't think the comments here are well informed.

downut2• 1 year ago

145 comments and still no mention of the Sackler family, except in my own comment. 2 down votes also, LOL! What are you afraid of people! Look into the history of fentanyl.

Huge hint for all you search challenged: Sackler family on wikipedia.

I've got a bit of karma to spend, and I think I'll double down and spend it to zero for the next year, dribbling a bit of facts out, to the consternation of the conspiracy bots now obvs infesting this now hell-site by a large majority.

Paul Graham, is this what you meant to create, 25 years ago?

(PG counts money.... YES!)

(Main takeaway: big money protects big money first)

Edit: fuck no, I'm not going to provide a courtesy link to Wikipedia. If you can't be bothered to use the ah user interface, you're too lazy to respond to.

thatswrong0• 1 year ago

You just walked in to a room, called everyone stupid, and then surprised Pikachu faced about the fact that everyone is looking at you funny now.

Maybeee reconsider your motivations and/or your social tact my dude. Cause right now you just look like someone trying to feel smarter than others.

Guid_NewGuid• 1 year ago

There's nuance to these numbers since interception will be an artifact of where people are looking but 95% of intercepted fentanyl was from US citizens crossing the border.[0]

Funnily enough the Republicans seemed content to sit on their hands and play politics with this so called crisis until the media broke the story.[also 0]

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/border-fe...

zoklet-enjoyer• 1 year ago

I've been saying this since 2011. China is waging a chemical war against the United States.

ashoeafoot• 1 year ago

Why is the us the only place with huge demand ?

How does fentanyl get into the US?

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