EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – El Paso has not been immune to the synthetic opioid epidemic sweeping the United States for the past four years.
The Drug Enforcement Administration last year seized 1.5 million fentanyl pills and 165 pounds of fentanyl powder in a region that stretches from Midland, Texas, to the New Mexico-Arizona state line. Likewise, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 27 kilos of fentanyl in the El Paso Sector last fiscal year.
In addition, Mexican drug cartels are stepping up shipments of methamphetamine – a highly addictive synthetic stimulant that figured in more than 10,000 overdose deaths in 2021, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Combined, meth and fentanyl figured in 37 overdose deaths in El Paso County in 2022, and fentanyl traces were found in 62 of 94 total fatal ODs, according to the county’s Medical Examiner’s Office.
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“We see in El Paso a lot of methamphetamines,” said Towanda Thorne-James, the special agent in charge of the DEA’s El Paso Division. “Fentanyl is in everything that we seize: It’s in meth, it’s in cocaine, in heroin – it’s in everything.”