Florida Sheriff’s Office Seizes Enough Fentanyl to Kill 1.5 Million Adults

 

A Florida police department has announced that they seized enough fentanyl to kill 1.5 million people during a recent drug bust.

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office announced the massive drug bust in a tweet on Monday.

“JSO Narcotics Unit seized 3 kilos of fentanyl, 1.26 kilos of cocaine & over 6,000 counterfeit pills containing fentanyl; enough fentanyl to kill 1.5 MILLION adults,” the Sheriff’s Office tweeted on Monday.

 

Fox News reports that “the announcement comes just days after police in Flagler County, Florida, which is just over 70 miles south of Jacksonville, announced the arrest of a fugitive with enough fentanyl to kill over 100,000 people.”

“Fentanyl has become the largest driver of the U.S. opioid epidemic in recent years, with seizures of the drug spiking nearly 200% at the southern border in July, the highest amount seized in at least four fiscal years,” the report added.

Roughly 75 percent of all drug overdoses last year, approximately 80,000, were fentanyl-related.

According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration, Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50-100 times stronger than morphine.

“Fentanyl is added to heroin to increase its potency, or be disguised as highly potent heroin,” the DEA’s website explains. “Many users believe that they are purchasing heroin and actually don’t know that they are purchasing fentanyl – which often results in overdose deaths. Clandestinely-produced fentanyl is primarily manufactured in Mexico.”