Fentanyl is ‘single greatest challenge US faces,’ says Department of Homeland Security Secretary

Fentanyl is the ‘single greatest challenge the US faces as a country’, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary has said.

Alejandro Mayorkas made the comment during a Senate hearing Wednesday, in what is thought to be the first time any member of Biden’s Cabinet has described the lethal synthetic opioid in such stark terms.

Mr Mayorkas pointed to the record 75,000 deaths in 2022 due to fentanyl overdoses, the equivalent of 1,500 American lives lost every week.

The drug, which is flooding into the US from Mexico and China, has become the leading cause of death for those aged 18 to 49 in the US, figures suggest, surpassing guns and car accidents.

Republican lawmakers have blamed the Biden administration’s lax immigration policies for the surge in fentanyl coming across the southern border. 

Deaths caused by fentanyl in the US surged in the 2010s. At the start of the decade, 2,666 Americans died of a fentanyl overdose. This figure shot up to 19,413 by 2016. Covid made the situation worse, with a record 72,484 deaths recorded in 2021, followed by another record of 75,000 deaths last year

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said fentanyl is the ‘single greatest challenge the US faces as a country’ during a Senate hearing on Wednesday

According to the US Customs and Border Protection, the vast majority of fentanyl goes into the US through legal ports of entry, in vehicles

The Senate Appropriations subcommittee chairman Sen Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, opened the Senate panel by telling Mr Mayorkas he wanted the fentanyl crisis to be the department’s top priority for 2024. 

Sen Murphy said: ‘This budget better do everything humanly possible to stop the import of deadly fentanyl into the United States.’

Mayorkas told the committee that the current fentanyl crisis had been building before Biden took office. He added that the administration was working with Mexico to ‘bring the fight to the cartels’.

Customs and Border Protection seized a record nearly 15,000 pounds of fentanyl last year. More than 90 percent of busts occurred at ports of entry along the Mexican border. 

The potent synthetic opioid is 50 times stronger than heroin and 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. It is used by doctors for patients in serious pain or with terminal illnesses.

It is cheap, highly addictive, relatively easy to smuggle into the US, and cost effective for dealers to mix it into their supplies, which saves them money and can extend or boost the high experienced by users.

But it takes a vanishingly small dose of fentanyl to cause a fatal overdose  Just two milligrams, the equivalent of five grains of salt is enough to cause death. 

Because it is cut into other popular drugs, many people who die of overdoses do not know they are taking fentanyl. Fentanyl has been partially blamed for America’s sharp fall in life-expectancy over the past three years.  

It’s now found in everything from cocaine to molly and street benzodiazepines like Xanax. 

Fentanyl, a highly addictive synthetic opioid, is causing carnage on the streets of Portland, Oregon. The drug has flooded into the US, initially along the East Coast but the steepest rises are now being seen in the west

The drug was initially produced in India and China and mailed to recipients across North America. Makeshift labs have since sprung up in Mexico to receive the precursor chemicals from Asia, mix them or press them into pills, and smuggle them into the US

The fentanyl crisis has helped fuel the steep drop in American life expectancy in recent years. Americans now live 76.4 years on average, down from 78.8 years in 2019. In the UK, which suffered the Covid pandemic just as the US did, but does not suffer a fentanyl crisis, life expectancy slightly increased from 81.3 years in 2019 to 81.52 in 2021.

The Homeland Security department includes Customs and Border Protection, the body tasked with stopping illegal fentanyl and other narcotics from coming into America.

According to the US Customs and Border Protection, the vast majority of fentanyl goes into the US through legal ports of entry, in vehicles. 

Nobody knows how much fentanyl in both gel and pill form is successfully crossing the Southern border, however and seizure rates remain low. 

The opioid being cut with virtually every street drug in the country killed a record 75,000 Americans in 2021 in the latest numbers, the equivalent of 1,500 lives lost weekly.

The common drug adulterant is highly potent and fatal in large doses. The equivalent of five grains of salt worth of fentanyl is enough to cause death.

Meanwhile, a company that processes drug tests has detected a nine fold rise in fentanyl use in the western US these past three years — showing the powerful opioid has now cast its deadly shadow across the whole country.

This week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Narcan, the nasal spray that rapidly reverses opioid overdoses. 

The medicine can now be sold over the counter without a prescription.

Fentanyl was invented in the US in 1959 as a cheaper alternative to other painkillers used in hospitals and health centers worldwide.

Three chemicals, benzylfentanyl, 4-anilinopiperidine and norfentanyl and considered to be precursors to fentanyl by the DEA – meaning they are primary ingredients to the drug’s creation.

It binds to opioid receptors in a person’s nervous system, which are responsible for giving the body a pleasurable feeling when activated.

Its prevalence in the illicit drug supply surged during the 2010s, though. In 2011, 2,666 deaths were caused by fentanyl – a figure that has dramatically increased nearly every year since.

The fentanyl crisis took off in 2016, where annual deaths more than doubled to 19,413, up from 9,580 a year earlier. In 2017, deaths caused by the synthetic opioid reached 28,466.

Covid accelerated the fentanyl epidemic and caused surges in deaths in back-to-back years.

Already In the first three weeks of 2023, 35 overdose deaths have occurred in King County, Washington, according to local outlets. Pictured: A man in Seattle smokes fentanyl 

Kensington, which up until the 1950s was a bustling industrial district, is now described by The Philadelphia Inquirer as ‘the poorest neighborhood in America’s poorest big city’

In 2020, the first year of the pandemic, deaths caused by fentanyl rose 52 percent to 55,516 from 36,359 in 2019.

The crisis worsened in 2021, with death figures jumping to another 30 percent to 72,484.

America’s homeless population has been among the hardest struck by the nation’s fentanyl crisis.

In King County, Washington, which includes Seattle, officials say the number of fentanyl deaths among the city’s homeless have left morgues out of room to store bodies.

America’s homeless population has been among the hardest struck by the nation’s fentanyl crisis.

In King County, Washington, which includes Seattle, officials say the number of fentanyl deaths among the city’s homeless have left morgues out of room to store bodies.