U.S. Pharma Industry’s Opioid Push Fueled Fentanyl Crisis, DEA Head Says

A former assistant U.S. attorney says the pharmaceutical industry helped start the crisis of fentanyl addiction, overdose, and death in the United States.

Sherry Hobson of San Diego said drug companies pushed prescription opiates on the public for years until law enforcement started to tighten the reins. But by that time, enough Americans were addicted to opiates that there wasn’t enough supply. So addicts turned to the black market, which created a business opportunity for Mexican drug cartels to start producing fentanyl.

Fentanyl is a synthetic analog of the painkiller morphine (distilled from poppy plants). But it is 50 to 100 times more potent by weight, which is what makes it so easy to overdose on. Plus, it’s cheap to make. Fentanyl has found its way into almost every illicit street drug because it helps stretch the product and increase dealer profits. Now, fentanyl is responsible for the greatest number of overdose deaths annually.

Hobbs said it was “very strange” to realize that the pharmaceutical companies “set the table” for the market dominance of Mexican drug cartels. But that’s what happened, she said, after decades of drug makers lying to the public about the properties of painkillers such as Oxycontin. Drug makers said their new opiates were not addictive (that is not true), and this led to overprescription and addiction.

All that craving has to find an outlet somewhere, and the Mexican fentanyl makers are meeting the need.

Hobbs prosecuted Mexican cartels during her 30-year career as a U.S. attorney in San Diego. This gave her intimate knowledge of how the sector works, and she said it was easy to predict that Mexican drug lords would get into the fentanyl market. The cartels are looking for profit, she said, and for “perpetual power.”

Anne Milgram of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agrees. She said “the opioid epidemic definitely started this arc.”

But social media is a big part of the problem too, according to Milgram. The cartels also use social media, but not just to catch up on family gossip and politics. They’re looking for people to be drug mules to carry their illicit product across the U.S. border and social media is a great place to recruit.