In the United States, the illegally manufactured drug called “fentanyl” is spreading. International journalist Takeshi Yabe said, “70,000 people die each year from fentanyl intake. It is supplied from China.”
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Kills 70,000 people a year in the US
Illegal drug abuse continues to rise in the United States. Particularly horrifying is the epidemic of fentanyl, a highly potent opioid used as an analgesic, which is a naturally occurring organic compound found in poppies or produced from them. It is a generic term for
Fentanyl was developed by Belgian chemist Dr. Paul Janssen in 1960 and was approved for medical use in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1968. Since then, it has been widely used as an anesthesia during surgery and as an analgesic in intensive care, but the problem now is that fentanyl, which was illegally manufactured by Mexican drug cartels and others, was smuggled into the United States and many It’s taking people’s lives.
Fentanyl has become prevalent in the United States because of the long-established black market network of illicit drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine. In addition, since the early 2000s, more and more people have become addicted to opioid pain relievers prescribed by doctors. Dependence on prescription drugs means that even if the doctor stops prescribing them, they will not be able to stop using them, making them more likely to resort to illicit drugs.
The Mexican drug cartels, who took note of this growing demand for opioids in the United States, began manufacturing and trafficking fentanyl, which is dozens of times more potent than heroin, cheap to produce, and highly profitable.
Meanwhile, with the fentanyl epidemic in the United States, the number of drug overdose deaths has soared, and according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there will be 107,622 deaths in 2021. 238 were attributed to fentanyl.