Stats Show Fentanyl Replacing Heroin as Cartel Cash Cow
Fentanyl is rapidly replacing heroin as the drug cartels are using to make money. Statistics on drug seizures from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) show that there has been a clear shift in the cartels’ smuggling habits, and the data strongly indicate that the border chaos of recent years is facilitating this lethal trade. Comparing statistics across the last three full fiscal years (FY) is as it informative as it is alarming.
Heroin seizures were high throughout FY 2021, closing the year on 5,400 lbs. seized. But by FY 2023 seizures had fallen to just 1,500 lbs. That is a 72 percent drop in just two fiscal years. By contrast, fentanyl seizures in FY 2021 were 11,200 lbs. and over 27,000 lbs. in FY 2023. This is an enormous 141 percent increase. The statistics show that the cartels are clearly changing their business model. Cartels see more money and growth opportunity in fentanyl, and are moving away from heroin and towards fentanyl.
Fentanyl is attractive to the cartels because of its massive money making potential. In terms of the profit margin, for just $50,000 in production costs, $20 million worth of fentanyl can be sold. This is a return of $400 for every $1 spent. For cartels, like any business, the profit margin of that magnitude is too high to ignore. Another feature that attracts the cartels is the sheer addictiveness. Fentanyl snares people into addiction more quickly and totally than even heroin, given that fentanyl is 100 times more potent than heroin. The more powerful the drug, the more powerful the addiction and with that, the more business for smugglers and dealers.
The true scope of fentanyl smuggling and drug seizures is likely to be an underestimate. As the saying goes when you go on a fishing trip, you know how many fish you caught, but not how many got away. One reason fentanyl is not always successfully detected and seized is the cartels’ employment of U.S. citizens as mules. Much of the fentanyl is smuggled brazenly through legal ports of entry and the cartels’ logic is that U.S. passport holders will be less vigorously questioned and inspected than a foreign passport holder by CBP officers. Furthermore, CBP officers have been totally overrun with the unprecedented scale of illegal immigration at the southern border, and this divides their attention away from drug detection duties, allowing more contraband to enter between ports of entry. The cartels know this and are driving migrant flows into America to distract from shipments of fentanyl.
The costs to America of this shift in cartels smuggling habits are enormous. First, fentanyl is more deadly than heroin, and being 100 times more powerful dramatically increases the likelihood for overdose deaths. In 2021, 106,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, around 70 percent of which were due to synthetic opioids, of which fentanyl is the most common. Put simply, fentanyl kills a number of Americans each year broadly equivalent to the number of Americans killed during the entire Vietnam War. Another way to imagine this is to picture a Super Bowl stadium full of people, who are all dead by the end of the game. The human cost is extraordinary, as Americans lose family members to addiction, crime, prison and death wrought by the fentanyl plague in our communities.