Nogales Port of Entry Director Michael Humphries stated Monday that more fentanyl had been seized at his port in three months than in the entirety of the 2022 fiscal year (FY).
“In the first 3 months of FY23, the Nogales POE has already surpassed the total amount of fentanyl seized throughout all of FY22, which was already a record year,” tweeted Humphries.
In the first 3 months of FY23, the Nogales POE has already surpassed the total amount of fentanyl seized throughout all of FY22, which was already a record year. pic.twitter.com/ScRNc8KEwo
— Port Director Michael W. Humphries (@CBPPortDirNOG) January 9, 2023
Humphries provides regular updates on drug busts made at his port, announcing approximately how many pills are found each time. Every drug bust varies, with some seeing only a few thousand pills while, on the other hand, officials have confiscated over a million pills in one day.
Since October, when the 2023 fiscal year began, Humphries has made 25 drug bust announcements. After tallying up the recorded amount of fentanyl seized in each of these, the port appears to have confiscated 16,211,700 pills of varying colors during the three months. Additionally, 104.93 pounds of fentanyl powder were also seized during that time. Fentanyl was also not the only drug confiscated by CPB agents at Nogales, as Humphries reports also included cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine.
The port also encountered a variety of methods smugglers used to try and move the product. While many pills were hidden within vehicle parts, some were found strapped to a pedestrian, concealed inside construction tools, and inside cooked tamales officers searched.
Each time pills are caught, there is potential that an overdose was averted. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) states that fentanyl can be very lethal. Two milligrams of fentanyl can be enough to cause an overdose, depending on the user’s tolerance, and 42 percent of pills tested by the DEA contained more than the lethal dosage. The DEA estimates that one kilogram of fentanyl “has the potential to kill 500,000 people.” Additionally, fentanyl powder is often mixed with other drugs like heroin to increase its potency or trick users into thinking it is a higher quality drug.
Therefore, if the DEA’s findings are accurate, and roughly 42 percent of illicit fentanyl pills have the potential to kill, then the 16,211,700 pills confiscated by Humphries and his officers could hypothetically cause 6,808,914 overdoses, should every one of those pills have been sold and used. This estimation represents three months of drugs taken from a single-entry point along the U.S. southern border.
However, the number of recorded overdoses in Arizona is significantly less than this. According to the Arizona Department of Health Services, currently, 1,524 Arizonans are confirmed to have died from an opioid overdose in 2022. White males between the ages of 25 and 34 made up most of these overdoses. Meanwhile, overdoses that did not result in death totaled 3,187 in 2022.
Nonetheless, whether actual overdoses meet estimations, people in the state are still exposed to the drug. According to the California-based Millennium Health, fentanyl positivity in urine samples received from Arizona substance use disorder treatment practices increased by 261 percent between 2019 and the first half of 2022.
In November, Cristian Machado was sentenced by Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchel to three and a half years in prison for selling fentanyl to homeless people in Phoenix. When police arrested him, they discovered roughly 14,000 pills in his possession.
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Neil Jones is a reporter for The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Neil on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Port Director Michael W. Humphries” by Port Director Michael W. Humphries.
