The US Drug Enforcement Administration reported that a raid on a home in a sedate New York state neighborhood uncovered enough fentanyl to kill 2 million people.
Federal agents found five kilograms (just over 11 pounds) of fentanyl and six kilograms (13.2 pounds) of heroin Friday when they raided a fentanyl mill operating out of a home in Ardsley, the DEA said.Five people who were arrested during the raid are facing several drug charges.Braulio Mata, 31; Jose Garcia, 44; and 20-year-old Yarly Mendoza-Delorbe were charged with conspiracy and drug possession. Another suspect, Ramon Aracena Alfe, 47, is facing a possession charge. The fifth person, 32-year-old Dionell Duarte Hernandez, has been charged with possession and resisting arrest, officials said.
As one might suspect, the neighbors were clueless about what was occurring in the house.
“It’s shocking, it’s shocking and kind of scary and awful all at the same time,” said a neighbor.Five people are now in custody and facing charges ranging from conspiracy and possession of heroin and fentanyl to resisting arrest.Braulio Mata, Jose Garcia, and Yarly Mendoza-Delorbe lived at the house.”I have been here for 11 years, nothing like that ever happened before.”Neighbors tell us that they didn’t know their neighbors well but they said that they started renting the house a few months ago.One resident told us that they did notice a lot of cars and coming and going but never suspected a large drug mill was operating on their street.
Border crisis deniers might have difficulty minimizing the impact of this toxic opioid on America’s population of young adults. For example, Arizona and other southwestern states bordering Mexico are a hot spot in the nation’s fentanyl crisis.
Aaron Francisco Chavez swallowed at least one of the sky blue pills at a Halloween party before falling asleep forever. He became yet another victim killed by a flood of illicit fentanyl smuggled from Mexico into the Southwest — a profitable new business for drug gangs that has pushed the synthetic opioid to the top spot for fatal U.S. overdoses.Three others at the party in Tucson also took the pills nicknamed “Mexican oxy” and police flagged down by partygoers saved them by administering naloxone overdose reversal medication. But the treatment came too late for Chavez, who died at age 19.The four thought they were taking oxycodone, a much less powerful opioid, investigators believe. The death of Chavez and many others, officials said, illustrate how Arizona and other southwestern states bordering Mexico have become a hot spot in the nation’s fentanyl crisis. Fentanyl deaths tripled in Arizona alone from 2015 through 2017.”It’s the worst I’ve seen in 30 years, this toll that it’s taken on families,” said Doug Coleman, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration special agent in charge of Arizona. “The crack (cocaine) crisis was not as bad.”
The death rates have reached the point in Ohio that the Stark County coroner in Canton, Ohio, had a “cold storage mass casualty trailer” truck because the morgue overflowed with bodies. Nearly half of them victims of drug overdoses.
In 2015, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported West Virginia, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Ohio and Rhode Island had the highest rates of drug overdose deaths in the country.But the situation in rust belt states like Ohio, where the drug overdose rate in 2015 (the most recent federal figures available) was 29.9 per 100,000 people, is especially dire.
The deaths were attributed to overdoses to heroin, a powerful tranquilizer used on animals like tigers (carfentanil), as well as fentanyl.
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