WASHINGTON D.C. — Federal officials on Capitol Hill were grilled Thursday on what’s being done to stop the soaring number of deaths caused by exposure to fentanyl.
>>> STREAM CHANNEL 9 EYEWITNESS NEWS LIVE <<<
The Drug Enforcement Administration says around 265 people die from a drug overdose each day, and fentanyl has become the leading concern.
READ: Fentanyl driving opioid deaths in Central Florida, experts say
Experts say the synthetic drug is about 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.
In 2021 alone, the DEA says it has seized 13,000 pounds of fentanyl, an all-time record.
“My DEA brothers and sisters and I have never seen anything as dangerous as this fentanyl threat,” DEA Deputy Administrator Louis Milione said Thursday during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the overdose crisis.
Milone told members of Congress that fentanyl is the driving force behind the crisis. He says drug cartels in Mexico are mass producing synthetic drugs and are distributing it around the United States.
“Fentanyl is killing countless Americans every day in all our communities,” Milione said. “It knows no geographic or economic bounds.”
Milione says one of fentanyl’s most dangerous threats is its ability to evolve.
The DEA and President Joe Biden’s administration say some new types of synthetic drugs can be produced faster than the U.S. can classify them in a scheduling system, so they’re calling for Congress to permanently place all fentanyl-related substances into schedule one.
They say the goal is to give law enforcement the full ability to go after traffickers and manufacturers for those substances.
READ: Fentanyl-laced marijuana fueling Connecticut overdoses, police say
“We must deter the creation of these new substances and disrupt their flow into the United States,” Kemp Chester of the Office of National Drug Control Policy said during the hearing.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the number of overdose deaths connected to synthetic opioids jumped more than 50-percent last year.
Click here to download the free WFTV news and weather apps, click here to download the WFTV Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.