Commentary
On Aug. 27, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers in El Paso, Texas, caught a 14-year-old child walking across the border with 0.52 pounds of fentanyl concealed around his waist. Given that only a few grains of the drug are enough to kill, that one child had what it takes to end over 117,000 lives.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid produced in illegal underground labs in China, Mexico, and elsewhere, including sometimes in the United States and Canada. But most of the precursor chemicals come from China.
Just 2 milligrams of fentanyl, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), is enough to kill a new user unaccustomed to opiates. Due to inexact mixing in illegal labs, fentanyl pills range widely in dosage. The DEA has found some pills with over twice the lethal dose….