Fentanyl Facts

Fentanyl is a lethal and addictive drug. But politics and agendas distort the reality of the problem.

Fentanyl is a powerful and dangerous drug. One that is rising in illegal use across America. Fentanyl is classified as a synthetic opioid and follows on America’s long running addiction to opioids including heroin to oxycodone.

Unlike oxycodone where the problem was largely over prescription and shady pharmaceutical practices, fentanyl is a problem from illegal production that is being smuggled into the US. In that way it is similar to the problem with cocaine in the 1980s and heroin over the last several decades.

Unfortunately, whenever there is a new illegal drug, there is also a lot of misinformation and even outright lies that come along with it. This is in part due to lack of education on the topic and it is partly intentional to serve political goals. 

So what is there to know about Fentanyl?

The main source is not from illegal migrant crossings.

Yes, some Fentanyl comes through illegal crossings, but only a very slight amount. The vast majority comes through ports of entry: designated border crossings such as roads, bridges, shipping ports, and airports. 

90% of Fentanyl is seized at ports of entry. Almost all of that is from people who are authorized to cross the US border and over 50% of the smugglers are American citizens.

Fentanyl is not brought in by migrants seeking asylum no matter how often some politicians attempt to scare their voters by saying so.

It won’t kill all Americans

The often cited value is that as little as 2 mg of pure Fentanyl can be lethal. A better estimate appears to be that 3 mg is considered the lethal dosage for an average sized adult male. 

Even with the specific lethal dosage needing better definition, it is clear that Fentanyl is far more potent than other drugs such as heroin which has a lethal dosage of 30 milligrams, and around 200 milligrams being lethal for Morphine.

Despite the illegal status of cocaine, it is relatively safe with lethal overdoses being extremely rare when not mixed with other drugs.

In stark contrast, fentanyl’s lethality and highly addictive nature is leading to over 150 Americans dying each day from an overdose. Over 72,000 Americans died from fentanyl in 2022.

This puts fentanyl as the ninth leading cause of death in the United States for 2022. Overdose deaths are typically recorded as accidental deaths, which as a category is the fourth leading cause of death in the US:

• Heart Disease - 695,000

• Cancer - 605,000

• Covid-19 - 417,000

• Accidents - 225,000

• Stroke - 163,000

• Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease - 142,000

• Alzheimer’s - 119,000

• Diabetes - 113,000

• Fentanyl - 72,000

Politicians seem to enjoy the scare of saying that millions of Americans could have been killed from each seized shipment of fentanyl.

However, that claim is very misleading as the weight of what is being seized is mostly not fentanyl. When pills are seized they contain as little as 0.2 mg of fentanyl per pill. When powder is seized it is not pure, meaning it is mixed with other substances which dilutes the fentanyl.

Another misleading claim is that simply by touching fentanyl or breathing air in the vicinity of the substance can lead to intoxication or an overdose. Neither is true.

This is not a new problem

A lot of the discourse over fentanyl is that the US is facing a new and unique problem, but that simply isn’t true. America has a drug demand problem and there will always be people willing to fill that demand for profit.

Four years ago, heroin was 80% of the drug supply being smuggled across the border. Today it accounts for only 7% as fentanyl has taken over the top spot. A look into illegal drug use in New England found that fentanyl has in fact mostly replaced the heroin market.

The reason for this is purely economical.

When smuggling in a drug such as marijuana, a drug cartel has to ship trucks loaded with bales of the drug due to its low potency. With cocaine, cartels needed large storage areas to smuggle in enough to be worth the risk in terms of profitability. Heroin was the most potent drug being smuggled, which meant it took the least amount of space. 

The effects of fentanyl are 50x as potent as heroin. It takes very little space to smuggle in a profitable amount of fentanyl which makes it the new go to drug for cartels. 

Even in terms of fentanyl itself, the current rates of seizure are not new. Fentanyl shipments were on the rise and spiked up to current levels in late 2020, under the previous presidential administration.

So why does it seem so new?

The news wasn’t talking about it.

When Biden took office it became a political strategy by Republicans to tie fentanyl to illegal migrant crossings as part of a bigger scare tactic about our country being invaded by immigrants. A message that is strong with their America First base.

The more that politicians raised fears and concerns, the more interested networks were to cover fentanyl. Some more than others.

The misinformation being spread by this strategy doesn’t only affect elections, it is also a detriment to the much needed conversation on how to better handle America’s illegal drug problem. That’s because…

Increased Border Protection Won’t Solve The Problem

We already discussed how the majority of fentanyl comes in through ports of entry and not from illegal crossings which is enough to defeat the argument that building a wall on the US-Mexico border would solve the drug problem.

Greater checks and enforcement at ports of entry won’t stop the problem either. The amounts are so easy to conceal and the demand is so high that cartels will continue to push large amounts through ports of entry knowing most of it will be seized. The amount that gets through will still be significantly profitable for the cartels.

Also important to the discussion is the fact that cartels have shown their ingenuity over the years for getting drugs to American customers. 

• They’ve built massive tunnel networks under the border that come up into the basements of houses either owned by the cartel, or houses longly vacant. No border crossing needed.

• They’ve created smuggling submarines that reach the US coast. Even these are cheap enough to build compared to the street value of the products they carry, that having some of them stopped and seized would not hurt the drug business.

There is simply too much demand for illegal drugs in America and too many people in difficult situations that makes them willing couriers. 

Building a wall, increasing prison sentences, even the DEA and FBI raiding cartel bases of operations in other countries will not stop the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States. Over $1 trillion dollars and a War on Drugs lasting over 50 years has proven this time and again.

If we want to stop Americans dying from overdoses, it is time for a new approach to drug policy nationwide, not a larger war on drugs. More on this in the linked article below.