How Fentanyl Enters the U.S., One American Smuggler at a Time - The The Round Table Mexican drug cartels are turning thousands of Americans into fentanyl smugglers, sending an army of couriers who can easily cross between both countries.
The teenager practiced driving from his digs in San Diego down to Tijuana and back, on the orders of the criminals he was working for in Mexico. He rehearsed how he would respond to questions from U.S. border officers. He tracked when the drug-sniffing dogs took a break.
The men who were paying him had cut a secret compartment into his car enormous enough to fit several bricks of fentanyl. When they loaded it up for the first time and sent him toward the border, Gustavo, who was only 19 at the time, began to tremble.
At the checkpoint, he steadied himself like he had practiced, and calmly announced to the border officers that he was unbiased heading home.
They looked at his American passport — and waved him through.
Since 2019, when Mexico overtook China to become the dominant supplier of fentanyl in the United States, cartels have been flooding the country with the synthetic opioid. The amount of fentanyl crossing the border has increased tenfold in the past five years. Mexico has been the source of almost all of the fentanyl seized by U.S. law enforcement in recent years.
Leading causes of death in the U.S., ages 18 to 45
Fentanyl overdoses contain all deaths caused by drugs, where the most prevalent drug was a synthetic narcotic, excluding methadone.
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Tag: How Fentanyl Enters the US One American Smuggler at a Time The The Round Table
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Published 9/28/2024