Act Locally to Protect Americans from the Global Menace of Fentanyl and Other Synthetic Drugs
Parents were understandably rattled when seven youth at one Washington DC high school suffered fentanyl overdoses within a three-week span. Yet that’s just the latest of myriad such tragedies in a nation where more than 100,000 die from fatal overdoses every year. The deadly drugs are (mostly) produced by organized crime groups overseas, so it is natural that a group of U.S. Senators are calling for improved border security and the Secretary of State has formed a Global Coalition to Address Synthetic Drug Threats. But precisely because the main problem is synthetic drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamine, the most effective responses actually lie closer to home.
Illicit drug use, markets, and policy are truly being upended by potent synthetic drugs [link] that can be rapidly produced without reliance on agriculture. Overdose statistics show clearly that these drugs present greater risks for users than do traditional plant-based drugs like heroin and cocaine. What is less widely appreciated is the challenges they pose for traditional approaches to drug control policy.
Fentanyl is extraordinarily compact. Total annual illicit consumption is less than 10 metric tons, meaning it could fit in any one of the millions of tractor-trailers that cross the US-Mexico border each year. That makes border interdiction much harder than with cocaine, let alone a bulky drug like marijuana. Border interdiction could become better if vehicle-scanning technology improves, but to what end? At those market levels, fentanyl can be up to 100 times cheaper than heroin per dose, so it is easy for traffickers to replace lost loads. And unlike with agricultural drugs, they don’t need to wait through another growing season: their labs can more or less synthesize as much as they want, whenever they want.
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Jonathan P. Caulkins is the Stever University Professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College and Keith Humphreys is the Esther Ting Memorial Professor at Stanford University. Based on a recent issue brief.
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