SAN DIEGO — San Diego County is described as the epicenter for Fentanyl trafficking into the United States and that’s based upon the massive amounts that are constantly being seized at the border.
Which is why state officials are warning families of this crisis and want people to be educated as the number of Fentanyl overdose deaths are growing.
It's a constant threat happening near our border everyday, drug cartels looking for illegal entries to trafficked fentanyl and once the drugs have made it through the U.S. side of the border, the number of U.S. deaths increase.
“I could tell you in our district alone, the San Diego Medical Examiner reported 817 people died of fentanyl overdose-among them were teenagers. I just met at a forum with parents who have been devastated by the losses of their teenagers,” said Randy Grossman, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California.
Drug trafficking organizations typically distribute fentanyl by the kilogram—one kilogram of fentanyl has the potential to kill 500,000 people.
Which is why the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers have performed millions of inspections of travelers and seized more than 50 tons of illegal narcotics.
According to numbers released by the border this week, seizures this year were down about 23% for meth, 68% for heroin, but seizures were up 5% for Fentanyl.
CBS 8 asked the U.S. Attorney about how the drug cartels are changing their strategies to build those massive profits.
“There’s also a desire to make profits by the cartels to disguise fentanyl into drugs that are being marketed as fake oxy pills, because it’s much cheaper to make those pills and then sell them and it drives up their profit margin,” said Grossman.
State officials also say the greed of profit isn't just coming from Mexican drug cartels.
“The chemicals that are used to make fentanyl–those come primarily from China and India, they are imported into Mexico where oftentimes they are manufactured into both powder and pills and then they are distributed into the United States where they are given to street level dealers,” said Grossman.
While the threat is high, officials are constantly issuing public safety alerts.
Just last year the DEA issued an alert on the widespread drug trafficking of Fentanyl-laced fake prescription pills and have already alerted the public of the sharp nationwide increase of fatalities.
WATCH RELATED: 1 man died, 2 other men revived with Narcan after possible overdose in Mission Beach (Nov. 2022).
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