As for the drugs, in late July Fox News interviewed Dr. Corinne Stern, a county medical examiner based in Laredo, Texas, who said she’s seen an unprecedented increase in fentanyl OD deaths over just the past year.
“Prior to 2021, it was rare for me to see a fentanyl death in this office,” she said. “Now, I would say at least half of my drug overdoses have fentanyl.”
“These overdoses are impacting all ages,” added Bobbi Jo O’Neal, coroner for Charleston County, S.C., in an interview with Fox News.
“From old or young, teenagers, up into their 80s … all demographics,” she said. “It can say Xanax on the pill, or they have the coding — but they can be fake and they are actually fentanyl.”
According to reports, China banned fentanyl in 2019, but China-based vendors continue to export it to the U.S., while ingredients for making the drug are also ‘exported’ to the cartels.
NPR reported in November 2020:
For years, China has been a primary source of fentanyl trafficked into the United States. It is a powerful prescription drug for severe pain that’s made and sold illegally. It led to more than 37,000 overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2019, part of a national opioid crisis that has worsened this year during the coronavirus pandemic, according to federal health authorities.
Under international pressure, China’s government banned the production and sale of fentanyl and many of its variants in May 2019, resulting in a significant reduction in the country’s illicit fentanyl trade.
But more than a year later, Chinese vendors have tapped into online networks to brazenly market fentanyl analogs and the precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl, and ship them directly to customers in the U.S. and Europe as well as to Mexican cartels, according to an NPR investigation and research from the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, or C4ADS, a nonprofit data analysis group.