Authorities Seize 2 Million Fentanyl-Filled Pills
The number of drug seizures in the last quarter of 2021 alone reflects the huge amount of illicit fentanyl on the streets, and reflects the dangers it can pose to unknowing members of the public, especially young people, says N YU researchers.
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A new study by a consortium of academic researchers, led by New York University, has found that more than 2 million counterfeit pills containing fentanyl were seized by officials in the last quarter of 2021 alone, a 4,850 percent jump from 42,000 seized in the first quarter of 2018 that also included an 834 percent increase in the number of individual seizures of the pills, reports The Guardian. Researchers said the number of drug seizures is a reflection of the huge amount of illicit fentanyl on the streets and warned of the dangers it can pose to unknowing members of the public, especially young people, as the pills are regularly manufactured to look like legitimate pharmaceutical tablets such as Percocet, Xanax, and Adderall.
The study’s innovative methodology, analyzing real-time federal data on the drugs being seized by law enforcement on streets and at border crossings around the nation, could become an early warning system for spotting new drug dangers on the market and even heading off overdose deaths. In a two-month period in 2021, the US Drug Enforcement Agency announced it had arrested 810 drug traffickers across the United States and seized enough fentanyl-filled pills to kill more than 700,000 Americans. Overdose deaths in the US have exploded to more than 100,000 a year due to the huge amounts of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids saturating the nation’s drug supply.
