Number of fentanyl-filled pills seized by US law enforcement up 4,850%

Over the past four years, the number of counterfeit pills containing fentanyl that have been seized by US law enforcement jumped by 4,850%, according to a new study, underscoring how an alarming surge in the deadly drug is putting people at increasing risk for accidental overdose.

Researchers also found that the number of individual seizures involving fentanyl pills increased by 834%.The authors say this reflects the huge supply of these pills, which criminal drug networks manufacture to look like legitimate pharmaceutical tablets such as Percocet, Xanax, and Adderall, being imported into the US and sold on the streets.

Bar chart showing the increase in counterfeit fentanyl pills seized by US law enforcement from 2018 to 2021.

From 2020 to 2021 the number of pills seized surged from 4.1m to 9.7m.The study comes at a time when the number of overdose deaths in the US has exploded to more than 100,000 a year due to the huge amounts of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids saturating the nation's drug supply.

In a two-month period in 2021, the US Drug Enforcement Agency announced it had arrested 810 drug traffickers across the United States and seized enough fentanyl-filled pills to kill more than 700,000 Americans.

Researchers said the number of drug seizures is a reflection of the huge amount of fentanyl on the streets and warned of the dangers it can pose to unknowing members of the public, particularly young people who may be unwittingly buying fentanyl-tainted pills online or from friends.

In California, where fentanyl deaths were rare just five years ago, a young person under 24 is now dying every 12 hours, according to a Guardian analysis of state data through June 2021 - a 1,000% increase over 2018.Some of the most tragic cases involve teenagers experimenting with pills obtained from social media or friends, which they think are pharmaceutical-grade painkillers or anti-anxiety medications, but which turn out to be deadly doses of fentanyl.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/mar/31/fentanyl-overdose-us-law-enforcement