With Google, Bitcoins, and USPS, Feds realize it's stupid easy to buy fentanyl
A congressional report released Wednesday lays out just how easy it is for Americans to buy the deadly opioid fentanyl from Chinese suppliers online and have it shipped to them via the government's own postal service. The report also lays out just how difficult the practice will be to stop.
After Googling phrases such as "fentanyl for sale," Senate investigators followed up with just six of the online sellers they found. This eventually led them to 500 financial transaction records, accounting for about $766 million worth of fentanyl entering the country and at least seven traceable overdose deaths.
[...] "Thanks to our bipartisan investigation, we now know the depth to which drug traffickers exploit our mail system to ship fentanyl and other synthetic drugs into the United States," Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio said in a statement. "The federal government can, and must, act to shore up our defenses against this deadly drug and help save lives."
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by hoeferbe on Sunday January 28 2018, @07:00PM (1 child)
Unsurprisingly, U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Tom Carper (D-DE)'s statement includes gems like:
...which all point to more money (from you and me) being taken to fund more programs to delve deeper into tracking the populace's actions, unwarranted investigations into those actions and greater control & power by Federal agencies.
If I recall correctly, the federal government cannot keep drugs out of their federal prisons -- which are small, isolated, tightly controlled areas whose residents have lost much of their Constitutional freedoms. Yet, we are supposed to believe we can eradicate the drug problem in our expansive, inter-connected "land of the free" with just more government power!
I feel, as much as the next person, for those facing drug additions. That is why we need to get off this kick of expanding governmental control and reach into the lives of ~326 million United States residents to `save` (in Portman & Carper's statement's example) 42 thousand (0.0129% of the population) from opioids. In a news story about the actual subcommittee meeting [linns.com], I was glad to read Carper at least acknowledge expanding government power isn't enough:
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday January 28 2018, @07:47PM
Beagles. Cheap. Cute.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.