Fentanyl Is Smuggled for U.S. Citizens By U.S. Citizens, Not Asylum Seekers

[CousinIT]

https://www.cato.org/blog/fentanyl-smuggled-us-citizens-us-citizens-not-asylum-seekers

Fentanyl overdoses tragically caused tens of thousands of preventable deaths last year. Many politicians who want to end U.S. asylum law claim that immigrants crossing the border illegally are responsible. An NPR‐​Ipsos poll last week found that 39 percent of Americans and 60 percent of Republicans believe, “Most of the fentanyl entering the U.S. is smuggled in by unauthorized migrants crossing the border illegally.” A more accurate summary is that fentanyl is overwhelmingly smuggled by U.S. citizens almost entirely for U.S. citizen consumers.

Here are facts:

Fentanyl smuggling is ultimately funded by U.S. consumers who pay for illicit opioids: nearly 99 percent of whom are U.S. citizens.

In 2021, U.S. citizens were 86.3 percent of convicted fentanyl drug traffickers—ten times greater than convictions of illegal immigrants for the same offense.

Over 90 percent of fentanyl seizures occur at legal crossing points or interior vehicle checkpoints, not on illegal migration routes, so U.S. citizens (who are subject to less scrutiny) when crossing legally are the best smugglers.

The location of smuggling makes sense because hard drugs at ports of entry are about 97 percent less likely to be stopped than are people crossing illegally between them.

Just 0.02 percent of the people arrested by Border Patrol for crossing illegally possessed any fentanyl whatsoever.

[Tickle]

1. According to the CDC, 107,375 people in the United States died of drug overdoses and drug poisonings

I must be missing something here because I don't care who brings in the damn drugs! I just want it to stop but it keeps increasing

During the early days of the pandemic, restricted legal travel to the United States, banning nonessential travel through land ports of entry from Mexico in particular in late‐​March 2020. Because there were fewer opportunities to traffic drugs at ports of entry, traffickers switched to trafficking more fentanyl. Because fentanyl is at least 50 times more potent per pound than heroin and other drugs­­, smugglers need fewer trips to supply the same market. The seizure data demonstrate the change in tactics. From October 2018 to February 2020, about a third of fentanyl and heroin seizures at southwest ports of entry were fentanyl with no clear upward trend. By the time the travel restrictions were ended (at least for vaccinated travelers) in January 2022, over 90 percent of heroin‐​fentanyl seizures were fentanyl. Unfortunately, the market shift has continued. The absolute amount of fentanyl being seized quadrupled (Figure 4).

[Mosby]

2. and all those drugs come from Mexican drug cartels.

who are able to import precursor chemicals, transport them, and then process drugs in labs across Mexico. Then the Mexican drug cartels hire American drug mules to bring the shit across the border.

[Elessar Zappa]

3. The cartels won't go away

as long as there’s world wide demand. I think everything should be regulated and legalized so that legit business would be producing the drugs instead of violent criminal organizations.

[Igel]

5. Or find other ways.

That's the problem. The data might easily be very skewed. We act sure when we can't be.

So much smugglers are caught at legal border crossings. And they're Americans because they'd get through the crossings more easily. Fly a plane over, take a boat, harder to catch. Illegal entry, but harder to catch. Why insist on Yanks? Plus ports of entry tend to have more searchers.

As for the numbers caught between border crossings, it's a # / an estimate. And if you're crossing in between legal points of entry because you know the Border Patrol's timing or bribed somebody for info or to turn a blind eye and have a ton of the stuff, you don't need a lot of such instances. I've hiked in the Sonoran desert. Lots of places to drop 100 lbs of something so others would walk by 5' away and never see it.

A lot of this is argumentation from silence. We don't know so assume what we don't know can't be important. Flip side of the availability heuristic.

[lindysalsagal]

4. And it's being purchased by Americans, too. No one mentions that.

This is on us.