DEA seizes historic amount of fentanyl-laced pills

On Thursday, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced it had seized more than 1.8 million fake fentanyl-laced pills and arrested 810 suspects in a two-month organized nationwide law enforcement effort.

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco and DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said at a press conference that their agencies, working with state, local and national law enforcement partners, interceded in an effort to protect American citizens from overdosing. The amount of pills seized since Aug. 3, they said, when added to the more than 9.5 million fake pills already seized by the DEA in the past year, is more than the amount seized in the last two years combined.

“Opioids were responsible for nearly three quarters of the more than 93,000 fatal drug overdoses in the United States in 2020,” Deputy Attorney General Monaco said. “The pervasiveness of these illicit drugs, and the fatal overdoses that too often result, is a problem that cuts across America from small towns to big cities and everything in between. One pill can kill.”

The pills, which are designed to look like legitimate prescription drugs like Oxycontin, Percocet, Vicodin, Adderall, Xanax and others, are being produced by Mexican criminal drug networks, the agencies said, and are laced with fentanyl sourced from China. Sold through social media, e-commerce, the dark web and other distribution networks, the fake pills are widely available and when tested has been found to be deadly.

DEA testing found that four out of 10 of the fentanyl-laced pills contain a potentially lethal dose. The number of fake pills containing fentanyl has increased by nearly 430 percent since 2019, the agencies said.

“During the past eight weeks, DEA has targeted the criminal drug networks flooding the U.S. with deadly, fentanyl-laced fake pills,” Milgram said. “DEA remains steadfast in its commitment to reduce drug-related violence and overdose deaths by dismantling the violent, criminal drug distribution networks across the United States. The fentanyl-laced fake pills seized by DEA could potentially kill more than 700,000 Americans.”

Law enforcement also seized 712 kilograms of fentanyl powder, 158 weapons, 4,011 kilograms of methamphetamine and 653 kilograms of cocaine.