Agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration made the largest fentanyl bust in New York history, seizing enough of the substance to cause 7 million overdoses.
Authorities announced the arrest of a Colorado resident Tuesday, who was found carrying 40 pounds of fentanyl June 19, a deadly painkiller roughly 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. Agents conducting surveillance in the Bronx spotted 25-year-old Carlos Ramirez, from Lakewood, Colo., placing a wrapped package on the floor of a parked car near the Umbrella Hotel, reports New York Daily News.
They followed him back to a nearby hotel where they found a duffel bag sitting on top of a vending machine filled with 17 bags of powder, which later tested positive for fentanyl. Authorities said the haul could have sparked a mass overdose in New York if it hit the streets.
“The interdiction of this fentanyl headed for our streets is nothing short of extraordinary,” NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill said Tuesday, according to New York Daily News. “This poison could have resulted in up to 7 million overdoses.”
Fentanyl is blamed as the primary driver of the spike in opioid overdose deaths in the U.S. since 2010. Fentanyl is infiltrating drug supplies across the country because of how cheap the substance is compared to standard narcotics. While a kilogram of heroin from a Mexican cartel will cost a domestic supplier roughly $64,000, they can order a kilogram of fentanyl through the mail from China for only $2,000.
It can also be used to create roughly 20 times more doses than heroin, providing dealers with huge profits.
Drug overdoses are now the number one cause of accidental death for Americans under 50. The New York Times recently culled through data from state health departments and county medical examiners and coroners, predicting there were between 59,000 and 65,000 drug deaths in 2016.
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