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Border Fence Won’t Stop Top U.S. Drug Threat

February 26, 2019
By Sylvia Longmire

From In Homeland Security

There is an ongoing opiate crisis in the United States. Addiction rates and overdose deaths have been skyrocketing over the past few years, and few in law enforcement or elected office know what to do about it. President Trump has acknowledged this crisis, and believes that expanding the existing border fence is the solution to stopping opiates like heroin and fentanyl from entering the country from Mexico. Unfortunately, there are several reasons why more border fence will do nothing to slow down the illegal movement of opiates into the United States.

Credit: U.S. Customs and Border Protection

For the purposes of this analysis, the focus will be on fentanyl. This is a synthetic opiate that is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine, and is more commonly being found laced in with heroin, cocaine, and other illegal drugs.  The chemical was first developed in 1960 as a powerful painkiller in surgery and aesthetic, and the drug traffickers started realizing its potential a little over a decade ago. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the first major wave of illicit fentanyl-laced heroin hit the U.S. around 2005 and 2006. Now it’s taking over the illegal drug market.

    Fentanyl is currently considered to be the top illegal drug threat to the United States because of it’s often lethal and extremely addictive. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the number of deaths involving heroin in combination with synthetic narcotics has been increasing steadily since 2014, and shows that the increase in deaths involving heroin is driven by the use of fentanyl.  Among the more than 70,200 drug overdose deaths estimated in 2017, the sharpest increase occurred among deaths related to fentanyl and fentanyl analogs, with more than 28,400 overdose deaths. The drug is so lethal because the equivalent of a few grains of sand can result in an overdose.

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