Fentanyl, over 110,000 overdose deaths in the United States
In 2022, 110,000 adults between the ages of 18 and 49 died of drug overdoses in the United States. Of these, over 35 thousand for Fentanyl, rightly considered the deadliest serial killer of American adults. An opioid 50 times stronger than heroin. In 2022 the DEA seized 50.6 million counterfeit pills and 4,500 pounds of Fentanyl powder, the equivalent of “more than 379 million potentially lethal doses” capable of eliminating all 330 million Americans. The numbers of deaths are so high that the US government has launched, together with 84 countries brought together by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a veritable world war against drugs and their traffickers. Bliken opened the “war campaign” in front of the countries (among the few absent China) with the metaphor of the canary “America is like the canary in the coal mine”. “Basically what is happening here – said the Secretary – with Fentanyl will soon happen in the rest of the world. Once they have saturated our market, the transnational criminal mafias will concentrate elsewhere to increase their profits. If we do not act together with fierce urgency, it will be a catastrophe”.
Fentanyl, the most skilled criminal organizations of international bureaucracies
“Criminal organizations trafficking synthetic drugs are extremely adept at exploiting weak links in our interconnected global system– Blinken underlined – and when a government aggressively restricts basic chemicals, traffickers buy them elsewhere. When one country closes a transit route, smugglers move quickly to another. This is the definition of a problem that no country can solve on its own. That’s why we are creating this global coalition.” Blinken has promised more working meetings with international experts and a meeting at the United Nations General Assembly. The opioid business is gigantic in the US, as are its victims.
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