sadly, the United States is in the midst of the deadliest drug epidemic in our Nation's history, caused by some of the deadliest drugs ever created. It appears that more than 80,000 Americans died from drug overdose last year. By far, the biggest killers were lab-made opioids, such as fentanyl, which are cheap to produce and easy to mix with other street drugs such as heroin. These lethal cocktails have devastated countless communities and families across our Nation. Too many parents have come home to a dead child who mistakenly took a prescription pill or a so- called party drug laced with this deadly fentanyl. Illicit fentanyl, the kind created in underground Chinese drug labs or smuggled across our porous southern border by Mexican cartels, is made only to addict and kill. For those dark, terrible purposes, fentanyl is unsurpassed in the tragic history of addiction. It is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. Just 2 milligrams of fentanyl, an amount equivalent to a few grains of salt, is enough to kill a grown man. Just last December, police arrested a man in Arkansas carrying 7 pounds of fentanyl. Depending on the purity of that fentanyl, that would have been enough to deliver a fatal dose to up to 1.5 million Americans. That is far from the biggest fentanyl bust that police have ever made.…
On the recordApril 28, 2021
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