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The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says the amount of fentanyl in the nation's illegal pill supply is small. It helps reduce overdose deaths in the United States. Experts say so There are limitations to this claim and several other factors may be playing a role.
About 5 each The 10 fentanyl pills the agency tested this year contained lethal doses of the synthetic opioid pain reliever fentanyl, down from about 7 in 10 last year, DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said last week in a statement. Summit For families who have lost a loved one to a fentanyl overdose.
Federal data shows that between this June and last, overdose deaths fell by about 15%. Nearly 16,000 people lost their lives in the most recent 12-month period; Assumptions from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — and much of the decline is attributed to deaths from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids.
Milgram by A press release. “Cartels have reduced the amount of fentanyl they put into pills because of our pressure.”
In May, the DEA released a Report Outlining the illegal drug threats facing the US. The agency's primary mission is to continuously monitor and defeat the two Mexican drug cartels — the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Cartel — that are primarily responsible for the current fentanyl poisoning epidemic in the United States, the report said.
The DEA did not respond to 's request for more information about the fentanyl pill investigation, including the number of pills tested for this analysis and their source.
Experts say there are some other critical gaps in the DEA's analysis that weaken the link between the amount of fentanyl in the drug supply and the drop in overdose deaths.
For example, DAA tests pills, but experts say illegal fentanyl is widely available and used in powder form.
Recent test data from the Center for Forensic Science Research and Education shows a slight downward trend in the average purity of fentanyl powder in a highly volatile drug supply, said Dr. Alex Krotulsky, director of toxicology and chemistry at the organization. with teams across the US to examine and analyze drug samples.
“Changes in drug availability may have an immediate impact on mortality, but my hypothesis is that those changes will be very sudden and very significant changes,” he said. The small amount of fentanyl in the drug supply in the laboratory data is not enough to explain the thousands of deaths.
The measure the DEA uses to determine the lethal dose of fentanyl — 2 milligrams — is also subjective. Individual responses to fentanyl may vary based on the individual's tolerance to the drug as well as physical and genetic characteristics.
“There's so much volatility and there's no way to put a number on that,” Krotulski said. And the wide variation — a mix of routes of administration and other contaminants in the drug's supply — makes it difficult to tie the drops in overdose deaths to the changes in fentanyl that the DEA has found.
“In my opinion, it's definitely not just a slight reduction in fentanyl,” he said. “It's really a collaborative effort that's going on in the world of public health and public safety.”
In a statement last week, Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, highlighted the Biden administration's efforts to reduce drug use.
“Over the past four years, we've removed decades-old barriers to treatment for millions of Americans, made life-saving opioid overdose medications like naloxone accessible and affordable across the country, and issued historic grants. Let's prevent the illegal supply of fentanyl at the border,” he said. he said..
Milgram also noted that many factors contributed to the decrease in overdose deaths.
“A lot of work remains, and one death is too many, but today we can take comfort in the work we're all doing together — to enforce our laws, to educate Americans about the dangers of fentanyl, to increase access to naloxone. And [medications for opioid use disorder] — it's saving lives,” she said last week.
Dr. Daniel Cicarron, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, in the US, agrees that the study focuses on illegal drug trends in the US. He agrees that there are limitations to the DEA's analysis of the amount of fentanyl found in drugs, but it is one. A benchmark that can serve as a helpful starting point.
“Anything that reduces fentanyl exposure is going to lead to a reduction in deaths, because it's the most potent lethal agent right now,” he said.
Rumors from his recent job suggest that there was a “supply shock” with less fentanyl on the market: people in San Francisco and Ohio told him the drug was getting weaker, more expensive and harder to find. he said.
The sharp drop in overdose deaths also lends credence to this theory — as opposed to other explanations for gradual change, he said.
“A sudden double-digit drop reminds me of historical supply shocks,” Cicarron said, recalling significant changes similar to the way the Covid-19 pandemic hit the supply chain.
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“People, whether you're a legal consumer or an illegal drug user, are price conscious, and these translate relatively quickly,” he said. “So if a supply shock is meaningful and changes the street price or the purity in a meaningful way, consumption will decrease. And as consumption decreases at the population level, you'll see benefits. You'll see overdoses decrease.”
Still, Cicarron has a few other theories to explain the drop in overdose deaths, including two he likes more than the supply shock idea.
First, he is theoretically reducing the size of the population at risk; Young people who use illicit drugs are not seeking fentanyl at the same rates as older groups exposed to fentanyl when disrupting the supply of heroin.
Second, it suggests that the decline may simply be a reversion to the mean after a spike during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Either way, there's no way to pinpoint a single cause of overdose deaths, and the trend may not continue, he said. The illegal drug market is incredibly dynamic and dynamic.
“I'm not 100% sure that whatever this event is and what it causes will last another year,” Cicarron said. “We must expect the unexpected to come forward. If—unexpectedly, for me—this continues, then hallelujah.”