America’s fentanyl scourge UNCOVERED: Mailed from China, mixed in Mexico, the strongest opioid yet exploded in the pandemic and now kills a person every seven minutes — but officials are powerless to stop it

Americans may remember 2022 for events like Hurricane Ian, Uvalde’s mass shooting and the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling. But beneath the headlines, a poorly understood drug stealthily spread its dark shadow across the country.

Fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, emerged as the silent killer driving a 44 percent rise in overdose deaths, which reached 107,000 in the 12 months to January 2022 — more than gun and motor vehicle deaths combined.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says fentanyl and its chemical copycats caused about two thirds of those deaths — often young people who thought they were taking something less powerful.

Drug enforcement efforts had started to tame America’s opioid epidemic by cracking down on the so-called ‘pill mills’ that doled out prescription painkillers like OxyContin and Percocet and kickstarted the crisis in the early 2000s.

But this latest phase of addiction involving fentanyl has been more deadly and difficult to control, due in large part to the potency of the drug, which packs down small and is easy to mail or smuggle across borders.

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