The flow of fentanyl into New York City soared to record highs in 2021.
Law enforcement seized 2,420 pounds of the synthetic opioid across the state last year, with 95 percent of that haul, 2,300 pounds, in the Big Apple alone, according to disturbing new Drug Enforcement Administration data obtained by the Post.
The annual total represents a staggering 206 percent increase over the previous record 790 pounds of fentanyl seized in 2020.
“Throughout my 30 years in law enforcement I have never seen anything with greater killing power,” warned DEA New York Division acting special agent in charge Tim Foley.
Overdose deaths in NYC peaked at 596 in the first quarter of 2021, the latest period for which the city has data, steadily rising each quarter since 2018. More than 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year — a 29 percent spike in just one year.
Fentanyl increasingly arrives in New York City in ready-to-ingest pill form, designed to look like legitimate OxyContin, Vicodin or Adderall, among other prescription drugs.
The DEA of New York seized 82,087 fentanyl pills in 2021, up more than fourfold over the 19,378 pills found in 2020.
China is coming under increasing scrutiny for its role in fueling the crisis.
“Criminal drug networks in Mexico are mass-producing deadly fentanyl and fentanyl-laced fake prescription pills, using chemicals sourced largely from China,” the DEA claims in its new “One Pill Can Kill” campaign.
A multi-agency federal report released last month by the Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking calls fentanyl “a slow-motion weapon of mass destruction.”
It demands action to stop the flow of “precursor chemicals” from China used to manufacture the synthetic drug in Mexico.
“The expansion of [China’s] chemical and pharmaceutical sectors has outpaced the government’s efforts to regulate them, creating opportunities for unscrupulous vendors to export chemicals needed in [fentanyl’s] illegal manufacture,” the report states.
It blames the fentanyl crisis on America’s addiction to painkillers caused by the Food and Drug Administration’s ill-fated decision to approve OxyContin in 1995, which was “falsely marketed as an easy, nonaddictive fix for pain.”
Drug overdoses in America have “steadily climbed” since that decision, the report states.