It is a Schedule II narcotic under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) that is said to be 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. (It is interesting that until recently, marijuana was classified as a Schedule I drug.)

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is being criticized for intentionally allowing hundreds of thousands fentanyl pills to cross the New Mexico border from 2023-2025.

According to Alex Uballez, former U.S. attorney in New Mexico, "Authorities at times allowed drug shipments to go unseized as part of a broader effort to gather intelligence and build cases against major drug traffickers." "The bigger fish are worth catching," he said, "and that will save more lives."

DEA spokesperson Amanda Wozniak defended the DEA's actions: "Public descriptions suggesting that DEA knowingly permitted fentanyl to reach communities are false and fundamentally mischaracterize the facts." The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility "found in 2024 that the DEA and the U.S. attorney's office had made reasonable decisions in deciding to allow drugs to go unseized and that their inaction posed no 'specific danger to public health.'"

David Howell disagrees.

He is a former DEA special agent who "filed an official whistleblower complaint in 2023 to bring attention to what he thought was a tactic that risked public safety." He told the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility that "DEA agents had observed — yet not seized — separate deliveries of 150,000 and 50,000 fentanyl pills." For rocking the boat, "The DEA relegated him to desk duty for more than a year and docked his performance evaluations."

"We poisoned our community to make cases," Howell told the AP during a series of interviews. "Through our own willful blindness, we get to say, 'We don't really know what happened to the drugs.' But we 100% got people killed."

I disagree with David Howell.

The DEA didn't get anybody killed. If the DEA let a million fentanyl pills a day cross the border from Mexico into New Mexico it still couldn't be said that the DEA got anyone killed.

Anyone in the United States who dies from ingesting fentanyl or pills laced with fentanyl is killing himself. Just like anyone who dies from snorting cocaine, shooting heroin, smoking crack or crystal meth, eating magic mushrooms, swallowing ecstasy pills, overdosing on prescription drugs or sleeping pills, taking LSD, or drinking alcohol is killing himself.

No one who voluntarily takes these drugs is being poisoned or killed. No one who voluntarily takes these drugs has been victimized by society or the government. Drug users are fully responsible for the costs and consequences of their actions. If they overdose on fentanyl or any other drug and are rushed to the hospital, then they are responsible for paying the ambulance, physician, and hospital bills. If they don't survive, then it is their fault, and not the fault of the DEA, which should not exist in the first place.