Arizona customs seized more than 1M fentanyl pills this week

Fentanyl is flooding Arizona.

US Customs and Border Protection officials seized more than one million fentanyl doses in border city Nogales this week alone — just weeks after another 1.5 million pill haul in the same location, according to Fox News.

CBP agents found roughly 300,000 pills hidden in two smuggler vehicles in the town Tuesday, and another 736,000 doses — along with 196 pounds of meth — on a train traveling into the US from Mexico.

An additional 1.5 million fentanyl pills were seized in Nogales earlier this month.

Meanwhile, the Drug Enforcement Agency said Tuesday it has intercepted 379 million fentanyl doses this year alone — enough to kill every American.

The federal agency said two Mexican drug cartels — Jalisco and Sinaloa — are mostly responsible for the flood of the deadly synthetic opiate into the country.

The DEA said the cartels obtain the necessary chemicals for the lethal product from China and produce the drugs in hidden Mexican factories. DEA Administrator Anne Milgram has said smashing those two cartels is her agency’s top priority.

Fentanyl accounts for roughly 70 percent of all drug overdose deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There were 37,208 fentanyl deaths in 2020 and 41,587 in 2021, a sharp hike of 12 percent, the CDC said. Just 2 milligrams of fentanyl — an amount that fits on the tip of a pencil — is considered a potentially deadly dose of the drug, which is 50 to 100 times stronger than heroin.

Fatal opioid overdoses have hit teens especially hard during the pandemic. The CDC found that opioid death for victims ages 14 to 18 skyrocketed by 94% between 2019 and 2020, and another 20% the following year.

In 2021, the DEA issued a warning about fake fentanyl-laced pills made to look identical to real prescription medications, including OxyContin, Percocet and Xanax. Laboratory testing earlier this year revealed six out of 10 bogus pills contained a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl.