LETTER FROM WASHINGTON
Gloria Chavez, border police chief in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, had reason to celebrate on December 2, 2022. Her agents had just discovered a shipment of drugs – fentanyl – concealed in liquid form in the tank gasoline from a car. “This lethal amount would be enough to kill a population of 5.665 million people, which is two and a half times the size of Houston! », she wrote on Twitter. Behind this punctual and legitimate satisfaction looms a national disaster. It concerns chic neighborhoods as well as the most impoverished, urban areas as well as remote corners of the country.
In the United States, every seven minutes, on average, a person dies from the effects of fentanyl. This inexpensive designer drug, originally created to relieve cancer patients, is fifty times deadlier than heroin and a hundred times deadlier than morphine. It is distributed in all forms: liquid, powder, tablets. Since this summer, the anti-drug police (Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA) has warned about its marketing in a multicolored version to seduce a younger and naive audience. In 2022, the DEA seized nearly 379 million doses of fentanyl, an all-time high that is chilling considering the magnitude of the merchandise in circulation.
In total, according to health authorities, 107,622 deaths were recorded in 2021 from drug use, of which 66% were linked to fentanyl. The main importers are two rival Mexican criminal networks, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Next Generation Jalisco Cartel, one of the five most dangerous organizations in the world, according to the US Department of Justice.
Before flooding the United States, these groups no longer need to maintain plantations and rely on good weather, as with marijuana or opium. They acquire the chemical components in China and then manufacture the pills in their clandestine laboratories. Transport across the border requires a standard modus operandi. As for concealment, it is a matter of audacity and ingenuity: these pills have notably been found in Lego boxes or coconuts. The sale price varies depending on the location, but it is generally in freefall, due to the explosion of supply.
Biden administration charged with criminal negligence
In a remarkable multi-part investigation, the washington post recently retraced this entire journey. The daily highlighted the major mistakes made by successive administrations. “The Department of Homeland Security, whose agencies are responsible for detecting illegal drugs at the nation’s borders, has failed to step up scanning and inspection technologies at official crossings, instead spending $11 billion [10,3 milliards d’euros] to building a border wall that does little to stop fentanyl traffickers”explained the newspaper, on December 12, 2022.
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