Fentanyl Overdoses in the US Down For the First Year Since 2019

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From a Newsweek Article

The DEA Administrator who has overseen the response to the United States' fentanyl crisis told Newsweek Wednesday that targeting the entire supply chain — from China to Mexican cartels to criminal networks in the U.S. — is the reason overdose deaths have been falling precipitously.

Anne Milgram, who was appointed to the office by President Joe Biden in 2021, spoke after the Drug Enforcement Administration announced that in 2023, 69% of all overdose deaths were linked to the lethal synthetic opioid.

Fentanyl was responsible for around 200 American deaths a day last year. The drug's cartel origins has been a focus for the federal government, which has had to work to unpick a complex, global network – including pill pressers, transporters, and money launderers — in an attempt to cut off the flow into the U.S.

Milgram's interview with Newsweek comes at the end of her tenure leading the agency. President-elect Trump's choice to replace her withdrew his candidacy, and another appointee is yet to be announced.

"President-Elect Trump has made brilliant decisions on who will serve in his second Administration at lightning pace. Remaining decisions will continue to be announced by him when they are made," Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Newsweek.

OD Investigations

Under Milgram's leadership, the DEA expanded its Operation OD Justice, set up originally in 2021 in California to thoroughly investigate overdose deaths and trace the source of the drug. Since then, over 500 drug poisonings and overdose-related death investigations have taken place.

"Some of those, we have been able to directly link back to Jalisco in Mexico, and others to part of the criminal networks that we're targeting," Milgram told Newsweek, referring to one of the two major cartels linked to fentanyl distribution. The other is Sinaloa.

"In the last three years we have arrested four of the seven leaders of Sinaloa, so we're also having an impact on the leadership and the infrastructure in Mexico," Milgram added.

Overdose Death Stats

Drug overdose deaths in the United States fell 17% between July 2023 and July 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a new report released Wednesday.

Since 2021, over 100,000 people have died of overdoses each year in the United States. A record number of overdose deaths — over 108,000 — were recorded in 2022. The numbers dipped in 2023 and have continued to drop monthly throughout 2024.

While overdose deaths for 2024 have not been calculated yet, and will not be until after the end of the year, the CDC said that deaths fell 17% in a one-year period.

Global Networks

"We have now identified that these two networks, Sinaloa and Jalisco, are operating 65 countries around the world," she said. "Fentanyl remains a primarily North American problem within Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, but we have seen fentanyl seizures in other parts of the world. We've also seen the two cartels exporting methamphetamine in multiple countries."

The cartels are not the DEA's only targets, with China's role in precursor chemical production – the components used to make fentanyl – another vexing problem. Milgram said U.S. authorities had charged at least 20 Chinese companies and 20 Chinese nationals over their alleged roles in the drug's production. Diplomatic efforts have also led to the Chinese government take action on chemical production.

Drug traffickers are using cryptocurrency to launder the money associated with the fentanyl trade, which the DEA is now on to in its effort to map and target the entire criminal network.

"We have increased our capacity to trace the crypto and track the crypto globally, and we, again, have an entire counter-threat team, and those teams are agents, analysts, data scientists, targeters, chemical experts, money laundering experts," Milgram explained.

Source Newsweek