Illicit fentanyl is entering the US at highest rates ever – DW – 05/14/2024
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Officials seized more than 115 million pills containing fentanyl in 2023. The opiate is often mixed with street drugs and linked to overdoses.

Officials seized more than 115 million pills containing fentanyl in 2023. The opiate is often mixed with street drugs and linked to overdoses.

Counterfeit fentanyl pills are being seized by law enforcement in the United States at an unprecedented rate. A study published May 13, 2024, in the International Journal of Drug Policy indicated that more than 115 million pills containing illicit fentanyl were seized by US law enforcement in 2023.

The researchers behind the study said the number had grown from 71 million pills in 2022 and 50,000 pills in 2017.

The counterfeit fentanyl pills are made to look like legal prescription opioid medication — such as oxycodone and tramadol — but are often far deadlier than the originals.

“Fentanyl in pill form is now beginning to dominate the drug supply [in the US]. Pills are easy to ship and disguise and can also be marketed easily, as Americans have a reputation of loving their pills,” said the study’s lead author Joseph Palamar of NYU Langone Health in the US.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      0·
      7 months ago

      Really?

      How about the fact that legal alcohol causes college kids to die of alcohol poisoning on a regular basis?

      • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        7 months ago

        1. Alcohol and opioids don’t have the same effects and aren’t used the same way. It’s not as if people are binging heroin at parties.

        2. Alcohol isn’t legal for most college kids (i.e. those under 21), so that doesn’t prove what you think it does. Besides, in order to make your claim, you’d need to compare the situation of legal alcohol to the situation of illegal alcohol, not legal alcohol vs. illegal other drugs.

        3. Moreover, alcohol’s change in legality at adulthood is part of the problem: it being forbidden until that point hypes up the mystique and makes social drinking seem cooler than it really is. We’re dumping these young adults into an environment of alcohol availability right as their parental supervision has ended and peer pressure is near its peak. Is it any wonder there are problems when we set them up for failure like that?

        4. We tried prohibiting alcohol once; it didn’t go well. Unlike with opioids and the “war on drugs,” we learned our lesson.