fentanyl

Fentanyl-traffic suspects skip California court date after release on cashless bail

Two men accused of trafficking multiple thousands of fentanyl pills failed to show up for their court date Thursday after having been released on cashless bail last month.

Jose Zendejas, 25, and Benito Madrigal, 19, were released on their own recognizance less than a day after being arrested when, according to authorities, 150,000 fentanyl pills were found in their car during a California traffic stop on June 24.

The judge for their case in Tulare County issued a warrant for their arrest and dropped the men’s $2 million bond. Source: Washington Times

US Citizen Caught At The Border With Enough Fentanyl To Kill Every Single Person On The West Coast

Border Patrol agents seized 250 pounds of fentanyl, enough to potentially kill everyone living on the west coast of the country, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced Monday.

The border agents confiscated the drugs after pulling over a U.S. citizen driver of a 2015 Black GMC truck near Campo, California, where a drug sniffing dog found multiple packages of fentanyl hidden in the car’s spare tire and its gas tank, according to CBP.

Using the DEA’s metric that one kilogram of fentanyl has the potential to kill 500,000 people, the seizure contained over 56 million doses. The seizure has an estimated street value of $3,679,000, according to CBP. Source: Daily Caller

100,000 Americans died in a single year from Drug Overdoses for first time in U.S. history

Lawmakers and prosecutors may be under addressing the opioid crisis, specifically with regards to illegal fentanyl. The past stigma of over-policing recreational drugs and drug users may be partially to blame for this policy blind spot, but unless things change this crisis may only get worse.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that for the 12-month period ending in April 2021, over 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses for the first time ever.

This grim new milestone has unfortunately been slowly building, as America has seen a twentyfold increase in the opioid death rate between the years 1990 and 2020. Source: Law Enforcement Today