HOUSTON, TX (AP)


 


The Houston Forensic Science Center, which tests evidence for the various local law enforcement agencies in the Houston metroplex, says technicians in its drug testing lab have come across more seized drugs laced with the powerful narcotic fentanyl.


The Drug Enforcement Administration says the synthetic opioid is typically smuggled through US ports of entry along the Southwest border.


“The Houston division in Drug Enforcement Administration, in fiscal year 2019, seized about 53 kilograms of fentanyl. In fiscal year 2020 that number increased 600 percent, to 323 kilograms. At a fatal dosage unit, that’s enough to kill half the population of the United States,” DEA Houston division associate special agent in charge Eric Smith said.


Smith also called upon Congress to renew a law that allows for seizures of the substance at border checkpoints.


In 2020, the Mexican government reported on the final day of the year that various police and military forces had seized an estimated 1.3 tons of the synthetic opioid, compared to 222 kilograms in 2019.


Mexican authorities told the AP then that most of that drug’s precursors arrive from China as imports and are made into counterfeit pills.


What alarms various local and federal law enforcement agencies in Houston is the presence of the substance in pills seized that were thought to be the party drug “ecstasy.”