Enough fentanyl was seized in California last year to kill everyone in the world “nearly twice over,” officials said.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office made the startling announcement Tuesday as the US grabbles with an influx of the synthetic opioid, which authorities say is 50 times more powerful than heroin.
Golden State officials recovered about 62,000 pounds of fentanyl in 2023, which they estimate is worth about $670 million on the street.
A deadly dose of the drug is only about two milligrams, roughly equivalent to about ten to 15 grains of table salt, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
There are more than 225,000 deadly doses of the drug in one pound, meaning California seized enough of the drug in one year to kill some 14 billion people, or “the global population nearly twice over,” Newsome’s press release noted.
Seizures of the synthetic drug had skyrocketed by 1066% in California since 2021, when only 5,530 pounds of fentanyl was seized, officials said.
The cheap and extremely potent drug is often processed in Chinese labs, before being exported to Mexico and smuggled into the states by drug cartels, according to the Department of State.
Although pharmaceutical fentanyl is prescribed by doctors for patients in severe pain, illegally-made fentanyl is commonly mixed with black market drugs like heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine.
About a quarter million Americans have died from a fentanyl overdose since 2018, according to government statistics.
The lethal drug does not discriminate, having been linked to the apparently inadvertent deaths of famous musicians like Prince, Tom Petty and Mac Miller, the actor Angus Cloud and Leandro Anthony De Niro-Rodriguez, the teenage grandson of Robert De Niro.
The recent high-profile mysterious deaths of three Kansas City Chiefs fans whose bodies were found frozen in their friend’s backyard were also reportedly linked to fentanyl-laced cocaine.
Fentanyl is a poison, and it does not belong in our communities,” Newsome said, adding his state was “cracking down — increasing seizures, expanding access to substance abuse treatment, and holding drug traffickers accountable.”
