Tag: opioid epidemic

Bipartisan bill targets nitazenes: Synthetic opioids 40 times stronger than fentanyl

A new bipartisan bill is aiming to stop the spread of nitazenes, a deadly synthetic opioid that’s 40 times stronger than fentanyl and already causing a new wave of overdose deaths.

The two lawmakers spearheading the bill, Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Va., and Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Wash., both of whom took to social media to lobby for the legislation.

These drugs are the next fentanyl: cheap to make, easy to traffic, and devastating families across America,” Vindman wrote on ‘X.’ “This threat won’t wait, neither can we,” Baumgartner also posted.

While speaking with Dr. Shravani Durbhakula about nitazenes last fall, she told The National News Desk the synthetic opioids were first detected in the U.S. over five years ago. The most common form, five to nine times stronger than fentanyl. But others could be up to 40 times more potent. All are resistant to Narcan.

They were developed in the 1950s and the 1960s but they were not approved by the FDA because of how potent they actually are. They quickly make people stop breathing. Sedate them,” said Durbhakula.

This year, the U.S. is seeing a rise in nitazene overdose deaths. A map put together by the New York Post showed the areas most affected, which span from New Mexico to Virginia. Drug Enforcement Administration Houston Division Special Agent in Charge Jonathan Pullen recently told the Post, just as authorities in the U.S. and China increased efforts to tackle the surge in fentanyl, drug manufacturers shifted production to nitazenes.

I do think we are behind the curve. But that’s been the case with these synthetic opioids — that they shift,” Pullen said.

According to Pullen, nitazenes are produced in China, often with the help of Mexican cartels who then move north across the border. But although the federal government is making headway to tackle the threat, including President Trump’s border crackdown, more work needs to be done.

It’s very very difficult to stay ahead of it, so we’ve got to continue to step up our enforcement along the border,” said Pullen.

In addition to increased border security, the Trump administration has also hit China and Mexico with sanctions and tariffs to force foreign governments to act against illicit drug producers.

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Opioids More Likely To Kill Than Car Crashes Or Suicide

The National Safety Council reports that Americans are more likely to die from an opioid overdose than a car crash or suicide.

As Statista’;s Katharina Buchholz shows in the following chart, the likelihood of dying from opioid use in the U.S. increased from lifetime odds of one in 96 in 2017 to one in 57 in 2023 (down from one in 55 in 2022).

The same year, someone living in the U.S. only had one in 87 odds of dying of suicide and a one in 95 chance of dying in a car crash.

Potent and deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl – which is often mixed with heroin without the knowledge of drug users – contributed to this dismal development together with the ongoing crisis of prescription pain killer misuse.

The U.S. experienced 105,000 overdose deaths in 2023, down from 2022 after a severe uptick during the coronavirus pandemic.

The most likely cause of death in the U.S. continues to be heart disease with lifetime odds of 1 in 6, followed by cancer and stroke.

Covid-19 lifetime odds were similar to those of stroke in previous years, but are no longer reported by the source.

Despite being a common fear, the chances of dying due to gun assault stand at only one in 238, but are still greater than drowning or choking to death, which have odds of around one in 1,000 and one in 2,500, respectively.

Dying in a dog attack remains highly unlikely with the chances of that happening at one in 44,499.

Dying in a hurricane or tornado or any other storm event is actually more likely at one in 39,192.

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Fentanyl Involved In 70% Of US Drug Overdose Deaths

Perhaps the most dangerous thing about fentanyl is the fact that, due to its low price and high potency, it is often used to lace other drugs.

Whether it’s heroin, cocaine, meth or counterfeit pills mimicking prescription opioids such as Vicodin or Oxycontin – fentanyl is frequently used to increase the potency of illicit drugs, often unbeknownst to the user.

As Statista’s Felix Richter reports, this hidden presence dramatically increases the risk of accidental overdose, since people may take what they believe is a familiar drug but are actually playing a game of Russian Roulette, always in danger of ingesting a lethal dose of fentanyl.

According to CDC data, synthetic opioids, i.e. mostly fentanyl, are now involved in 7 out of 10 overdose deaths in the U.S. after having contributed to a dramatic surge in drug-related mortality over the past decade.

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$312 Billion in Chinese Money Laundering Networks Is Driving the Drug Crisis and Human Trafficking in the US

The Treasury Department has confirmed a national security and public safety disaster: Chinese money-laundering networks have pushed more than $312 billion in illicit transactions through U.S. financial institutions in recent years. 

That money financed Mexican drug cartels, enabled human traffickers, and supported organized criminal networks that have left tens of thousands of Americans dead from fentanyl overdoses and other cartel-driven violence.

According to FINCEN.gov, financial institutions filed 1,675 BSA reports in the dataset indicating suspicious activity potentially involving human trafficking or human smuggling.

FINCEN.gov also discovered funds potentially associated with healthcare fraud, elder abuse, and suspicious gaming activity.

What makes these Chinese Money Laundering Networks (CMLNs) especially dangerous is their coordination with Mexico’s most violent cartels, including the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation organizations. 

Mexico’s strict limits on U.S. dollar deposits force cartels to look abroad, while China’s own capital controls make moving money out of the country nearly impossible through legal channels. 

Criminals found the perfect solution: CMLNs convert cartel drug profits in dollars into Chinese renminbi and then cycle those funds back into the U.S. banking system. 

The cartels get clean money. China’s elites get access to American assets. And Americans pay the price in drug overdoses, gang violence, and financial corruption.

Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) documented 137,153 suspicious activity reports between 2020 and 2024 linked directly to CMLNs. 

These reports describe methods ranging from mirror transactions and trade-based laundering to the use of so-called “money mules.” 

Students, retirees, and homemakers with little or no income were recruited to make large deposits that far exceeded their financial profiles. This layering of ordinary citizens into billion-dollar schemes makes detection more difficult and gives cartels longer lifelines.

FinCEN also found $53.7 billion in suspicious real estate transactions, much of it in major cities where foreign buyers already distort housing markets. 

Another $766 million was tied to adult day-care centers in New York, which investigators believe could be linked to healthcare fraud, elder abuse, and even human trafficking. 

More than 1,600 cases pointed to human smuggling and trafficking operations, while another 108 cases were tied directly to elder abuse and Medicare fraud. 

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Ohio governor calls kratom an imminent public health risk, pushes for ban

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is urging the Ohio Board of Pharmacy to classify kratom as a Schedule I drug, citing it as an “imminent public health risk” due to its potential dangers, particularly for teenagers and babies.

Kratom, which is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, is sold in products like the Feel Free drink at gas stations and stores in Ohio and Kentucky.

The governor’s proposal would make Ohio the first state to take such strong action against kratom.

Doctors at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital are raising alarms about its risks.

Dr. Stephanie Merher, a neonatologist, said, “Some of the moms who have taken this and not taken anything else, they have actually needed to go on buprenorphine or methadone to get off of this. It’s that potent.”

She has treated babies exposed in utero who exhibit symptoms similar to opioid withdrawal, including fussiness, tremors and difficulty eating.

Dr. Shan Yin, medical director of the Cincinnati Drug and Poison Information Center, explained that kratom and kava, another ingredient in Feel Free, create a “speedball-like” effect. He noted, “It’s also at this point, unregulated. So, you never know quite what’s in it.”

Feel Free is sold as an herbal product, not a controlled substance, and carries a “21+ only” warning, which the company says it voluntarily implemented. However, that is not required under federal or Ohio law, so anyone can purchase it in the state.

Kentucky lawmakers enacted a 21-plus age limit on kratom last year, while Indiana banned it completely in 2014. Ohio currently has no restrictions.

Earlier in August, Ohio House Minority Leader Dani Isaacson (D) told WLWT he wants to protect kids from the synthetic form form of Kratom known as 7-OH. “You can buy it at convenience stores and gas stations and vape stores in super concentrated forms with no age restrictions. It’s not behind the counter. And so we need to do something about it.”

Botanic Tonics, the maker of Feel Free, disputes the safety concerns, asserting that its product contains only natural, whole-leaf kratom, not the concentrated synthetic form known as 7-OH.

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Canada’s Refusal To Cooperate With DEA On Fentanyl “Superlab” Investigation Fueled Cross-Border Tariffs  

President Trump’s new hemispheric defense strategy, stretching across North, Central, and South America, now includes the deployment of 4,000 troops and three guided-missile destroyers positioned in international waters off Venezuela, as part of a broader campaign to dismantle command-and-control hubs of narco-terrorists and purge Chinese-linked drug and money-laundering networks from the region. 

Last week, the Pentagon positioned three Aegis guided-missile destroyers (the USS Gravely, USS Jason Dunham, and USS Sampson) directly off the coast of Venezuela as new force posturing takes hold in the region, with the Pentagon’s crosshairs focused on narco-terrorists fueling America’s drug death crisis that claims 100,000 lives per year. 

Simultaneously, attention turns to Canada, which, like Mexico and other surrounding countries, remains a very weak partner in the region as the Trump administration advances its hemispheric defense strategy to clean up the Americas ahead of the 2030s. Trump’s cleanup of the Western hemisphere is almost comparable to his micro efforts to restore law and order in crime-ridden Washington, D.C. – and soon, in many other cities nationwide left in ruins by failed Democratic leadership that allowed violent crime and open-air drug markets to flourish. 

Sam Cooper of the investigative outlet The Bureau has uncovered in recent years that North America’s fentanyl crisis is not just a drug death crisis wiping out military-aged men and women by the hundreds of thousands – it’s also a sprawling international money-laundering machine, run through Chinese Triads, Mexican cartels, and Canadian financial networks in a massive transnational crime web that fuels the crisis. Some view this operation to subvert Washington as Chinese irregular warfare, explained here.

Cooper’s work, as we’ve covered in recent years, spans Chinese narcos using laundering networks via TD bank and other Canadian financial institutions to “Breaking Bad-style” superlabs in Canada to all things China subverting the Americas…

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Medical Marijuana ‘Significantly’ Decreases Use Of Opioids By Chronic Pain Patients, New Study Finds

A new study is offering more evidence that marijuana can serve as an effective substitute for opioids in pain management treatment.

Researchers in Australia at Murdoch University and the Perth Pain Management Centre set out to investigate how the integration of cannabinoids into treatment for people with chronic non-cancer pain would impact opioid use.

The study, published in the journal Pain Management on Monday, determined that “co-prescription of cannabinoids may enable patients to reduce their opioid consumption prescribed for chronic benign pain.”

To assess the relationship between cannabis and opioids in treatment, researchers followed two cohorts of patients over the course of a year: One group of 102 patients at a pain clinic who were already taking opioids and were co-prescribed cannabis and another group of 53 patients at a different clinic who were only receiving opioids, without marijuana.

At the baseline, the median patient was taking about 40 mg of opioids per day. After a year, the group that received a median dose of medical cannabis containing 15 mg delta-9 THC and 15 mg of CBD “significantly” decreased their opioid dose to 2.7 mg per day. The opioid-only cohort after one year was taking a median 42.3 mg per day.

“The introduction of cannabinoids can produce useful reductions in opioid consumption in real-world settings, with additional benefits for disability and insomnia,” the study authors said. “However, this treatment is tolerated by only a subgroup of patients.”

Among the cohort that incorporated cannabis into their treatment regiment, “opioid consumption decreased significantly after both 6 and 12 months.”

“Physical activity and sleep also improved. These findings indicate that medicinal cannabis can help patients to reduce their opioid consumption and improve their physical activity and sleep,” the study concluded.

The findings are also consistent with a growing body of scientific literature exploring the association between cannabis and opioid use.

For example, a study published earlier this year in the journal Drug and Alcohol Review found that, among drug users who experience chronic pain, daily cannabis use was linked to a higher likelihood of quitting the use of opioids—especially among men.

A study published late last year also found that legalizing medical cannabis appeared to significantly reduce monetary payments from opioid manufacturers to doctors who specialize in pain, with authors finding “evidence that this decrease is due to medical marijuana becoming available as a substitute” for prescription painkillers.

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Chaotic NYC ‘Safe’ Injection-Sites Put On Notice By Trump

Democrats fully own the crime and chaos plaguing major cities, after decades of failed progressive experiments that have only backfired spectacularly, transforming some parts of America’s largest metropolitan areas into lawless, crime-ridden no-go zones. 

There’s an urgent need for course correction and to restore law and order in major cities run by rogue Democratic leaders whose failed social justice policies (influenced by leftist billionaires and their NGOs), like defunding the police and “safe” injection sites, have only fueled more crime, chaos, and disorder on the streets. 

President Trump’s “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets” executive order, issued late last month, has put these taxpayer-funded safe injection sites on notice.

Safe injection sites, such as those run by nonprofit OnPoint NYC in East Harlem and Washington Heights, supervise illegal drug use under the guise of harm reduction.

A clear legal precedent was set in 2019 under President Trump’s first term via the Department of Justice that successfully blocked a proposed safe injection site in Philadelphia under the Controlled Substances Act. The Third Circuit upheld the decision, and the Supreme Court let it stand. That ruling could now be used against NYC’s injection sites if the Manhattan U.S. Attorney chooses to follow Philadelphia’s lead. 

Trump’s new order calls on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to ensure that none of its “discretionary grants” indirectly fund such sites, which have been causing significant problems at the local level.

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Opening Legal Marijuana Dispensaries Is Tied To A Huge Drop In Opioid-Related Deaths, Analysis Finds

Counties that have marijuana dispensaries see an average of 30 percent fewer opioid-related deaths compared to counties without legal cannabis shops open, suggesting a substitution effect away from prescription pills and heroin toward the plant-based treatment, according to a new data analysis.

In a Washington Post piece on Wednesday, Harvard University economics student Julien Berman used data from the University of Michigan that identifies dispensary locations at the county level to compare opioid overdose trends over 10 years in jurisdictions where cannabis became legally available compared to those without regulated access.

“The theory is straightforward: making cannabis more available—and reducing its cost—could induce people to shift from opioids, which are super dangerous, to marijuana, a significantly safer alternative,” Berman said. “Existing opioid users seeking pain relief can choose marijuana instead of heroin, especially in counties where recreational use is legal and access is easy. And new potential users might never turn to opioids at all if they could get marijuana instead.”

Other factors were taken into account to support the conclusion, including comparisons of opioid mortality rates in counties within a legal state where some allow retailers to operate and others have chosen to opt out.

“That kind of variation helps rule out other state-level changes such as expanded access to naloxone—a drug that can reverse the effects of an overdose—as the main cause of the drop in deaths,” Berman said.

On average, the opioid death rates following the establishment of cannabis dispensaries declined more sharply in the immediate years after the opening compared to dry counties. But from years five to 10, there’s a more precipitous effect, with an average rate of 27 percent fewer opioid deaths in jurisdictions that have cannabis storefronts after a decade.

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Trump’s Anti-Crime Order Brings Back Long Term Facilities to House the Mentally Ill and Addicted

President Donald Trump issued a July 24 executive order titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets.” A record of more than 274,000 individuals were found to be experiencing homelessness. Homelessness often leads to increased crime and fires. Trump’s order pushes local governments to redirect the homeless to “long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment.” Cabinet heads have been instructed to prioritize funding to cities that work to abolish open drug use and camping on the streets. During the Biden administration, from 2022 – 2024, the federal government spent $28 billion, with most of the money going to Democrat cities that include New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Denver, Portland and San Francisco. During this period, homelessness increased by a whopping  33%. 

As of 2025, an estimated 72,308 people experienced homelessness in Los Angeles County. Homelessness is a business, and non-profit organizations are getting rich, in Democrat -majority California. The state currently is “missing” $24 billion in funds intended for the homeless! The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) is set to lose $300 million in funding, about 40% of its $875-million budget. LAHSA the lead agency that coordinates and manages federal, state, county, and city funds for the homeless.

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