How fentanyl gets to the U.S. from China

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/j5vpdx/how-fentanyl-gets-to-the-us-from-china

The powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl is now the deadliest drug in America, causing an estimated 19,000 fatal overdoses in 2016.

The DEA says most of the illicit fentanyl comes from China, either shipped directly to U.S. consumers through the mail or mixed with heroin that is smuggled across the southern border by Mexican drug cartels.

At New York City’s JFK airport, the point of entry for about 60 percent of the country’s international mail packages, seizures of fentanyl by Customs and Border Protection agents increased from 7 in 2016 to 84 in 2017. All of the packages came from China. Nationwide, fentanyl seizures by CBP increased from 459 pounds in 2016 to 1,296 pounds last year.

In New York City, the DEA seized a record 193 kilos of fentanyl in 2017 — enough to kill the city’s population 11 times over. James Hunt, special agent in charge of the DEA’s New York field division, said it’s virtually impossible to stop the flow of fentanyl.

“The southwest border of the United States is porous,” Hunt said. “There’s thousands of miles of border. Thousands of trucks stop every day at the border. There’s millions and millions of parcels coming into the country every day, you can’t search them all. And traffickers know that.”

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