In mid-September, a 15-year-old girl died in a bathroom at her high school in Hollywood from an overdose of fentanyl. Three other students from the same school were admitted to a hospital after ingesting pills bought in a park near the school. At least seven teenagers between the ages of 15 and 17 have overdosed on this powerful synthetic opioid in recent weeks in Los Angeles.
The drug, which killed more than 70,600 Americans last year, continues to permeate American society, leaving a trail of damage. The Biden Administration and the DEA, the anti-narcotics agency, have raised the alarm in recent weeks due to the increase in cases and especially due to the proliferation of rainbow fentanyl, which is sold in various colors to attract the youngest.
At the end of August, agents from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, in the state of Arizona, arrested two women, ages 26 and 19, who were carrying 850,000 fentanyl pills in two suitcases and had Phoenix as their destination. The arrest was made in the town of Gila Bend, a town 130 kilometers from the border with Mexico. A county prosecutor said then that this drug is being sold with colors “similar to those of candy”, a strategy of drug traffickers to hook the youngest.
This Monday, Merrick Garland, the US Attorney General, blamed the Mexican cartels for this crisis. In a conference with the head of the DEA, Anne Milgram, the authorities have reported that they have investigated 390 cases related to the drug since the end of May and the beginning of September. Of these, 51 are about overdoses. 35 of these can be directly linked to shipments illegally introduced by the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel, the two largest criminal organizations in Mexico.
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