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120 Pounds (54 kg) of Fentanyl Seized in Nebraska

posted by janrinok on Friday May 25 2018, @07:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the how-to-spoil-a-lot-of-parties dept.

takyon writes:

Record US fentanyl bust 'enough to kill 26 million people'

Nearly 120lbs (54kg) of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic painkiller, has been seized by police in Nebraska - one of the largest busts in US history.

The drugs, seized last month, could kill over 26 million people, according to estimates by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Police found the fentanyl in a fake compartment of a lorry. The driver and a passenger were arrested.

[...] It was the largest seizure of fentanyl in state history, Nebraska State Patrol said in a Twitter post on Thursday.

[...] Just 2mg of fentanyl - or a few grains of table salt - is a lethal dosage for most people, and even exposure can cause a fatal reaction, according to the DEA.

Another estimate: they could make 260 million people pain-free for a day.

Bonus story:

Mussels test positive for opioids in Seattle's Puget Sound

Scientists at the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife have found that mussels in Seattle's waters are testing positive for opioids. The finding suggests "a lot of people" are taking oxycodone in the Puget Sound, researchers say.

Also at the Puget Sound Institute.

Related: Opioid Addiction is Big Business
Heroin, Fentanyl? Meh: Carfentanil is the Latest Killer Opioid
Cop Brushes Fentanyl Off Uniform, Overdoses
Opioid Crisis Official; Insys Therapeutics Billionaire Founder Charged; Walgreens Stocks Narcan
U.S. Life Expectancy Continues to Decline Due to Opioid Crisis
Senate Investigators Google Their Way to $766 Million of Fentanyl
"Synthetic Opioids" Now Kill More People than Prescription Opioids in the U.S.
British Medical Journal Calls for Legalizing All Drugs

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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Friday May 25 2018, @09:21PM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Friday May 25 2018, @09:21PM (#684220) Journal

    Hahaha, good one. But it's the BBC's fault, not the DEA's. From the DEA's more carefully-worded FAQ:

    two milligrams of fentanyl (equivalent to a few grains of table salt) is considered to be a deadly dose for more than 95 percent of the American public

    However, the DEA/feds are known to include medium/packaging/glassware [wikipedia.org] when weighing drugs in order to inflict harsh sentencing:

    There can also be substantial discrepancies between the amount of chemical LSD that one possesses and the amount of possession with which one can be charged in the US. This is because LSD is almost always present in a medium (e.g. blotter or neutral liquid), and the amount that can be considered with respect to sentencing is the total mass of the drug and its medium. This discrepancy was the subject of 1995 United States Supreme Court case, Neal v. United States.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @09:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @09:40PM (#684225)

    There is also mention of purity in the article. More than likely it was already cut to heroin potency.

  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday May 26 2018, @01:56AM

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 26 2018, @01:56AM (#684309) Journal

    From the DEA's more carefully-worded FAQ:

    two milligrams of fentanyl (equivalent to a few grains of table salt)

    Hardly careful, exculpatory wording. There is no measurable amount of fentanyl that's equivalent to any measurable quantity of table salt. Even were they similar in only one, or a few, features, which ones? Taste? Smell? Feel? Mass? Volume? Color? It doesn't say.

    This fentanyl can be dangerous stuff if you don't measure it carefully, yet the DEA is encouraging people to think it's just like NaCl--and saying it's deadly--in the same breath, robbing themselves of any credibility they previously possessed.