By: Bethany Blankley | The Center Square contributor
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials alone have seized enough lethal drugs this fiscal year through June to kill more than 6.4 billion people.
The amounts of lethal doses they’ve seized of fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine are enough to kill the U.S. population 19 times.
Fiscal year through June, CBP agents have seized 22,000 pounds of fentanyl at ports of entry nationwide, according to most recent data. They also seized 175,000 pounds of methamphetamine and over 70,000 pounds of cocaine.
These amounts are greater than what was seized in all of fiscal 2022.
Two milligrams of fentanyl is considered a lethal dose. One pound, equivalent to 453,592.4 milligrams, is enough to kill 226,796 people. Twenty-two thousand pounds is enough to kill nearly 5 billion people.
According to AddictionResources.net, a lethal dose of cocaine is over 30 mg; a lethal dose of methamphetamine is an estimated 200 milligrams. Based on these estimates and the seizure amounts, CBP agents seized enough lethal doses of meth to kill nearly 397 million people and enough lethal doses of cocaine to kill over one billion people.
Combined, fiscal year through June, enough lethal drugs have been seized by CBP alone to kill over 6.4 billion people – greater than 19 times the U.S. population of over 335 million.
These seizures exclude those made by state and other federal agencies.
In Texas, for example, over 422 million lethal doses of fentanyl have been seized through its border security mission Operation Lone Star.
In Arizona, one multiagency effort resulted the seizure of enough illicit drugs, including fentanyl, to kill over 40 million people.
In one single carload bust in Los Angeles, authorities seized enough fentanyl to kill over 600,000 people.
In Florida, one multiagency bust seized enough fentanyl to kill the state’s entire population, and that was after a previous bust that seized enough to kill half the state’s population.
Last year, DEA agents seized over 58 million fake prescription pills laced with fentanyl, and 13,000 pounds of fentanyl powder in 2022, “enough fentanyl to supply a potentially lethal dose to every member of the U.S. population. These seizures occurred in every state in the country.”
Last fall, the DEA issued a public safety alert stating six out of every 10 fentanyl-laced fake prescription pills its experts analyzed in 2022 contained a potentially lethal dose, an increase from four out of 10 pills tested in 2021.
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