Seizures of fentanyl at the southern border have spiked over the past 12 months, doubling the amount of the lethal drug confiscated a year earlier, according to a report on Tuesday.
In the period from October 2020 to September 2021, Customs and Border Protection officials seized 11,201 pounds of fentanyl, the Washington Examiner reported.
One kilogram of fentanyl is equivalent to 500,000 lethal doses, the federal government estimates, meaning the seizures represent 2.5 billion doses prevented from entering the country, the report said.
In fiscal year 2020, 4,791 pounds of fentanyl were confiscated.
The increase in seizures is closely connected to the jump in overdose deaths in the US.
“If they’re seizing a lot, it’s because a lot is coming in — because you don’t know the percentage of how much is coming through that they’re actually seizing,” Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, told the Washington Examiner.
Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, told the newspaper that fentanyl is easier to produce and transport, but much more deadly than other drugs.
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