Fentanyl: A National Security Issue
Your daughter is missing. She hasn’t returned home from school and it’s already 9pm. You’ve already called the police, but instead of just waiting around, you decide to look around town yourself. You head to her High School and find your daughter in the courtyard of the campus suffering from an overdose. She tells you her friend is also on drugs and still inside the restroom. You find an employee on campus and gain access to the restroom, where you find your daughter’s friend unresponsive. By the time medical first responders arrive, she’s pronounced dead at the scene.
This is exactly how 15-year-old Melanie Ramos was found dead inside the girl’s restroom at Helen Bernstein High School, in Hollywood, California in September 2023. Her death was caused by fentanyl. Unfortunately, she is just one of thousands of lives this drug has taken recently. From adults, teenagers, and infants, few substances have wielded as profound and deadly an impact as fentanyl in recent years. As a former drug addict, I know how easy and accessible it is for young kids to use drugs. Prior to joining the military, I was addicted to Methamphetamine and spent the bulk of my teenage years under bridges drinking 40oz bottles of malt liquor and smoking meth or popping opioid pills. Looking back, it’s difficult to comprehend what I was thinking during that time. In many ways, I absolutely hated meth and yet, I couldn’t stop myself from using it without the help of others. Today, I am father to a 15-year-old daughter, who thankfully, lives a drastically different life than the one I lived at her age. I get sick to my stomach, when I read stories about teenagers her age, like Melanie Ramos, who have died from overdosing on fentanyl.
However, I ask myself, “how worried do I have to be?” Are drugs really a national issue like some media outlets make it appear to be? I remember the LA sheriff’s department coming to my school growing up and introducing the D.A.R.E. program. We’d watch those cheesy videos with the horrible acting of some scenario of kids who smoke pot and then end up dying at the end from jumping out the fourth story window because they think they can fly. As a kid, those videos are funny, and we were more naïve to the world around us. As adults, those 90’s marijuana videos are probably just as funny, but we cannot afford to be so naïve to how drugs are impacting our country. Quietly slipping across the borders between the United States and Mexico, fentanyl has sparked a crisis of staggering proportions. Its lethality is not just measured in statistics, but in shattered lives across the nation. As a security professional deeply concerned with the well-being and safety of our nation, it is imperative to address the growing crisis of this harmful drug.
Fentanyl isn’t new. You’ve probably read or seen countless warnings from various media about the drug. It has been used in the U.S. since the 1960 as an intravenous anesthetic and is still prescribed today by doctors, often in the form of patches and lozenges, for treating severe and chronic pain from cancer and other illnesses and injuries. However, fentanyl has shifted from exclusively being produced by pharmaceutical companies to now also coming from drug cartels and other entities, says David Fiellin, MD, a Yale Medicine primary care physician who specializes in addiction medicine. Although overall data indicates drug seizures at the U.S.-Mexico border, by pounds seized, are trending down, those numbers can be misleading. Seizures of heavier, less-potent drugs like marijuana are much lower, while U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) fentanyl seizures have increased more than 860% from fiscal years 2019-2023, and fentanyl seizures nearly doubled from fiscal years 2022-2023.
In fiscal year 2023, CBP seized 240,000 pounds of drugs at the southwest land border, which included an estimated 1.1 billion doses of fentanyl. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) stated in December 2022 that the agency seized more than 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder in the U.S. that year, while explaining that most of the fentanyl being trafficked by the Sinaloa and CJNC Cartels is being mass-produced at secret factories in Mexico with chemicals sourced largely from China. Illegal drug producers are mixing fentanyl into various other drugs, including heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamines. However, the most alarming find is they are also putting it into fake prescription pills, including oxycodone (OxyContin®), hydrocodone (Vicodin®), and benzodiazepines (Valium®), that are sold on the street.
“Dealers package it to look like a normal prescription pill that you would get at the pharmacy, but nobody can tell what's in it,” explains Dr. Fiellin. “So, someone buys from a drug dealer what they think is Valium, or cocaine, or OxyContin, but it has a small amount of fentanyl in it that the buyer is unaware of. This can cause an overdose because the individual doesn’t have the physical tolerance to fentanyl, even if they have a tolerance to, say, OxyContin.”
In 2022, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately 83,000 people died from opioid overdoses in the United States, the majority from fentanyl and other synthetic substances. Although some media outlets have boasted the number of drug overdoses declined last year, the decline between 2022 and 2023 was modest and is estimated to be 3%, which is a difference of about 3,500 deaths. Overall, more than 80,000 deaths in 2023 were linked to opioids. Synthetic drugs like illicit fentanyl are taking the lives of more than 150 Americans every day, making fentanyl a serious public health crisis. In Los Angeles, there were 2,100 recorded fentanyl overdoses of Homeless people over a ten-year period (2014-2023). Last year alone, the LA county medical examiner logged more than 1,000 drug-related deaths of homeless people, including a record-high of 728 overdoses linked to fentanyl.
As everyday citizens, it may seem discouraging, as if there isn’t much you can do about this issue. However, you do not have to be a policy maker, a medical professional or a law enforcement officer to make a difference. Here are 3 practical ways you can combat this issue:
Education and Awareness: Educate yourself and your community about the dangers of fentanyl. Stay updated on local and national trends in opioid use and overdose deaths. Share information through community forums, social media, and neighborhood watch groups.
Carry Naloxone (Narcan): Naloxone is a life-saving medication that can reverse opioid overdoses and is increasingly available in communities across the country. Everyone should carry it and know how to administer it. It is an essential item for your individual medical kit.
Support Smart Policies: Support policies and programs that promote comprehensive approaches to combating the opioid crisis, including prevention, treatment, and enforcement efforts.
Fentanyl's impact extends well beyond its lethal potency; it destabilizes communities socially and economically. Trafficking networks exploit vulnerabilities in border security and distribution channels, profiting immensely while perpetuating addiction and crime, undermining local governance and law enforcement efforts to keep our communities safe. From a national security perspective, this undermines our ability to protect our borders, and safeguard the health and well-being of our citizens. As a security professional, and a prior drug addict, I urge you to take proactive steps to stay informed, educate others, and support initiatives aimed at combating the spread of fentanyl. By working together, we can mitigate the national security risks posed by this deadly substance and protect the health and safety of our communities.
Benjie Manibog
DSG cadre and Retired Marine Raider
