(DC Pundit) – In the realm of presidential transitions, one might expect a focus on economic policies or foreign relations. But for President-elect Donald Trump, a more insidious threat looms large: the drug crisis that’s been silently ravaging American communities. And folks, it’s not just your garden-variety street drugs we’re talking about here.
Move over, fentanyl. There’s a new drug in town, and it’s making fentanyl look like candy corn at a Halloween party. Enter carfentanil, the heavyweight of the opioid world that packs a punch so strong, it’s sent overdose deaths skyrocketing.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, not known for its tendency to exaggerate, has dubbed fentanyl “about 100 times more potent” than morphine. But carfentanil? It’s the Godzilla to fentanyl’s house cat, boasting a potency level that is 10,000 times stronger than morphine.
“Last year, nearly 70% of all U.S. overdose deaths were attributed to illegally manufactured fentanyls (IMFs),” Fox News reported, painting a grim picture of America’s drug landscape. “One of those was carfentanil, an altered version of fentanyl that is said to be 100 times more potent, the CDC warned.”
The CDC’s State Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting System divulged the grave statistics, “Deaths from carfentanil rose by more than 700% in the past year, according to the same source — there were 29 deadly overdoses between January and June 2023, and 238 in that same time frame in 2024.”
These numbers might be just the tip of the iceberg, with some deaths still lurking in the shadows of unreported data.
Carfentanil made its debut in 2016 before taking a brief hiatus. Now it’s back with a vengeance, thanks to a user-friendly mass production process.
While incumbent President Joe Biden has been tiptoeing around the issue, Trump seems ready to charge at it like a bull. As he continues his quest for the perfect DEA chief, Trump has made it crystal clear that both the border crisis and its poisonous offspring – the drug flow – are high on his hit list.
But carfentanil isn’t the only Frankenstein’s monster lurking in the shadows of America’s drug crisis. Remember “tranq”? That’s the charming cocktail of fentanyl mixed with animal sedative that turned parts of Philadelphia into scenes from a zombie apocalypse movie back in May 2023.
Will the incoming Trump administration be able to stem the tide of this deadly drug? Or will carfentanil continue its reign of terror, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake?
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