By Steve Neavling
The DEA has seized so much fentanyl in the past year that it’s enough to “kill every single American,” Anne Milgram, head of the DEA, said.
In an interview on Face the Nation, Miligram said the agency has seized 15,000 pounds of the deadly, highly addictive synthetic opioid.
“We’ve taken off 20 million fake pills this year. We estimate at the DEA lab that four in 10 of those pills are potentially deadly. We’ve taken off 15,000 pounds of fentanyl this year. That is enough potentially lethal doses to kill every single American,” Milgram said. “So we are doing a lot of work to make sure that we are taking those drugs off the street.”
In the 12 months ending April 2021, more than 100,000 people died in the U.S. from drug overdoses. Nearly 64% of the deaths were caused by fentanyl.
“We’re in the middle of an unprecedented moment, 100,000 Americans have died. That’s more Americans than died from car crashes. That’s more Americans that died from car crashes and gun violence in the past year. This is unprecedented, and it is tragic,” Milgram said. “So to me, DEA has to do everything we can to meet this moment. We have to do more than we’ve ever done before, and so does Mexico, and so does China. And so to me, this is about saving lives.”
The fentanyl is mainly coming from drug cartels in Mexico, and the chemicals are being imported from China, Milgram said.
“We’ve built a case against the criminal drug networks,” she added. “And we’ve drawn that line between the Mexican criminal cartels that are mass producing illicit fentanyl and making these fake pills and pouring it into the United States. What we’re doing is investigating. We want to understand everything about how this is happening. And of course, the social media companies need to do more.”
