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“Many of our drug dealers are mixing fentanyl with other drugs. Fentanyl is obviously dangerous in and of itself, but when users have no idea what they are using it creates more of a risk,” said Sgt. Aaron Dammen with the Janesville Police Department’s Street Crime Unit in southern Wisconsin.

Some of the increasing reliance on fentanyl stems from recent shortages of heroin at the street level as well as changes and disruptions to global opium and drug trades stemming from the coronavirus pandemic and the U.S. military exit from Afghanistan.

Afghanistan produces more than 90% of the world’s opium and heroin supplies.

Like with the mainstream economy, the $400 billion drug trafficking world also hinges on basic economics such as consumer demand, pricing and costs and global supply chains.

Opium prices were up 33% between 2020 and 2021, according to United Nations estimates, and have seen recent price fluctuations. Promised crackdowns opium farms promised by the hardline Taliban, who took back control of Afghanistan last year, could put upward pressures on prices and push down supplies.

Fentanyl is already the increasingly preferred ingredient for hard drugs, despite its dangers. The synthetic opiate is 50 times stronger than heroin and has proven dangerous and deadly for new, novice and relapsing drug users—some of whom faced social isolations, job losses and behavioral health stresses during the pandemic.

“With heroin, our sense is that declines starting in 2017 were driven by declining demand. Other researchers have reported that the farm-gate price for opium was declining at the same time by substantial amounts,” said Bryce Pardo, associate director of the California-based Rand Drug Policy Research Center. “One likely reason is that Mexican cartels are shifting toward synthetic opioids which are cheaper and easier to make and conceal.”

Pardo said there were also indications during the coronavirus pandemic that drug syndicates were challenged to find precursor elements used to make methamphetamine.

Fentanyl has been showing up more and more in other drugs including counterfeit pain pills, heroin, meth and cocaine.

“We have had overdoses, some resulting in death, where users thought they had purchased straight crack cocaine, when in fact, the dealer had mixed fentanyl in with it,” said Dammen, “We have also seen dealers who are pressing their own counterfeit prescriptions that are composed of fentanyl as well.”

There have also been some concerns about marijuana as well as THC gummy and hard candies potentially being laced with fentanyl, which can be 100 times stronger than morphine.

More fentanyl, less heroin

Conversely, Dammen has seen less heroin in Janesville, an hour southwest of Milwaukee and 90 minutes west of Chicago.

“We have definitely seen a lot less heroin than we have in the recent past. I’m not sure if it’s because of manufacturing or distribution or of interest in using it. Fentanyl has definitely been more prevalent and is seen a lot more than heroin as of late,” he said.

There were 107,375 opioid overdoses in the U.S. from the 12 months ending in January 2022, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. That is a record level. In 2015, the CDC reported 48,126 opioid overdose deaths nationally.

The higher death rate coincides with the increased use of fentanyl by drug syndicates.

From January 2021 to January 2022, fatal opioid overdoses rose 28% in Oregon, 74% in Alaska, 44% in Kansas, 28% in Idaho and 16.5% in Wisconsin, according to the CDC.

The Oregon Health Authority reports that fentanyl overdose deaths jumped more than 600% between 2019 and 2021, from 71 to 509, respectively. Fentanyl made up 47.5% of all Oregon drug overdose deaths in 2021 up from 14.3% in 2019.

Some police officials are not seeing current shortages of heroin—but report the treacherous prevalence of fentanyl.

In 2010, fentanyl was responsible for 14% of opioid overdose deaths. Last year, fentanyl was responsible for two-thirds of fatal drug overdoses, according to the U.S. health agency.

Joe Gamble, Talbot County sheriff, said all the heroin recovered by his police agency last year had fentanyl in it.

“All heroin has fentanyl in it that we are seeing. We are also seeing straight fentanyl that is being sold as heroin,” said Gamble.

Gamble said fentanyl flowing into the rural reaches and Atlantic Coast beaches mostly comes from Baltimore. But that is a just distribution hub in a global supply chain network.

“Over 80% is coming right across the Southwest border. China is producing much of the fentanyl and selling it to the Mexican cartels. Cartels are also producing fentanyl … they also control the heroin,” said Gamble.

Fentanyl is routinely produced in synthetic drug labs in China and then shipped to Mexico where cartels move the deadly opioid into the U.S. via California and other border states.

Mexican authorities seized 1,200 pounds of fentanyl at a warehouse in the cartel dominated state of Sinaloa on July 7. The drugs have an estimated value of $230 million and could have been made into a millions of pills, according to authorities.

The rise in fentanyl overdoses increases the need for wider Narcan distribution. Narcan is a nasal spray that can counteract opioid overdoses. It is increasingly part of workdays for police officers, paramedics and firefighters. Drug treatment advocates are also trying to get more Narcan in the hands of drug users and their families and friends.

“We are seeing many cases involving fentanyl,” said Amanda Hunter, public information officer for the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office near Tampa.

The nearby St. Petersburg Police Department reports feeing fentanyl mixed with cocaine, according to Yolanda Fernandez, community awareness division manager for agency.

Hunter, Fernandez and other Florida law enforcement officials are not alone.

Warning signs of fentanyl overdoses include blue lips and fingernails, “pinpoint pupils”, clammy skins and vomiting, according to the Pasco sheriff’s office.

The flows of fentanyl and resulting overdoses are challenging rural, suburban and small town police department and drug interdiction efforts across the country.

Since May, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration raids have seized 48,000 fentanyl pills from an alleged dealer in Lawrence, Massachusetts. 10,000 fentanyl pills in western Illinois and 318,000 pills in the arrest of two Arizona men. A police drug raid in April broke up an alleged fentanyl ring near Orlando capable of producing millions of dangerous counterfeit drugs with pill presses that could produce as many as 5,000 pills per hours.

Fentanyl trafficking and distribution are also linked to some illegal marijuana growing operations in Oregon, California and other states.

Those illegal cannabis grows are fueled by federal, remaining state marijuana prohibitions and high taxes and fees on legal weed that can make it as much as 40% more expensive than street prices. A number of those illegal grows are operated by Mexican drug cartels and other organized crime syndicates who will sometimes use those operations to distribute fentanyl and other drugs.

Heroin flows

While fentanyl flows from China and Mexico, heroin is predominately sourced from Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, which was occupied by the U.S. military from 2001 until 2021 when the Biden administration exited the theater, now produces more than 90% of the world’s opium and heroin.

Opium cultivations in Afghanistan stood at 64,510 hectares in 2000, according to the U.S. State Department. Opium grows covered 224,000 hectares in 2020 and 177,000 hectares in 2021, according to UN estimates.

The heroin and opium grown and processed in Afghanistan is then distributed worldwide through trafficking routes via Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Indian Ocean links to Africa and Australia and southeast Asia.

Opium cultivation in Afghanistan declined 21% in 2021 compared to 2020, according to the latest UN estimates.The hardline, Islamist Taliban previously cracked down on some opium production before the post 9-11 invasion and occupation by the U.S. in 2001. The Taliban’s return to power in 2021 has also resulted in some renewed crackdowns on opium farming and production.

But Afghanistan’s opium market increased in value by 12% in 2021 to as much as $2.7 billion, according to UN projections.

Pardo said the U.S. “wasn’t really invested in poppy eradication or counter-drug efforts so any withdrawal probably had minimal direct effect.” Like with other cash crops, he said weather and climate changes have had major impacts on opium crops.

“Cultivation in Afghanistan is often impacted by drought and in recent years you can get pretty wild swings in numbers. From the early analysis put out by UNODC, prices of opium shot up when the Taliban took over and the UN suggested this was due to larger macroeconomic and political uncertainty,” he said.

The drug policy analyst also said there has been some increased meth production in Afghanistan. “Meth production out of Afghanistan is a growing concern and it’s unclear if this shift is related to changes in opium or poppy production,” Pardo said.

During the pandemic, illegal synthetic drug producers were sometimes challenged by supply chain disruptions which led to competition for supplies with some pharmaceutical and medical firms.

That may have impacted production of crystal meth. But the supply chain disruptions and COVID-induced restrictive shutdowns of Chinese ports and production hubs has not stemmed the flow of fentanyl and its dangerous and deadly impacts.