The amount of heroin seized in Arizona last year continued a steady upward climb while marijuana confiscated by the Drug Enforcement Administration plummeted to its lowest level in at least eight years, the latest sign of new supply chains and evolving enforcement priorities in the world of federal drug interdiction.
Federal agents seized more than 1,100 kilograms of heroin last year in Arizona — nearly a tenfold increase since 2010. By way of comparison, DEA agents seized 247,628 kilograms of marijuana in fiscal year 2017, down steadily each year from more than 670,000 kilograms in 2010, according to figures maintained by the National Seizure System within the DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center.
Agents also seized 78 kilograms of fentanyl in 2017 and more than 121,000 blue fentanyl pills, an even more “alarming” trend the DEA says it is prioritizing in 2018.
The year-over-year dip in Arizona DEA marijuana seizures corresponds with a wave of states legalizing recreational marijuana — about half as much marijuana was seized at the U.S. border in 2016 compared to 2012.
But it stands at odds with Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ purported crackdown on pot in the U.S. Sessions has said “Good people don’t smoke marijuana,” and in January sowed new unpredictability into the legal marijuana industry by rescinding policies not to interfere with state pot laws.
Heroin and prescription opioid abuse has emerged as a bigger issue nationally, and the Department of Justice’s long term marijuana-enforcement plans that could affect DEA operations remain to be seen.
The DEA’s Heroin Enforcement Action Team said the 2017 numbers — bolstered by some single, major interdiction efforts — jumped nearly 25 times higher than the previous year, when 5,000 pills were seized.
“What we’ve seen is a switch from pill mills and rogue doctors and rogue pharmacies to the cartels stepping in and mass-producing these products,” said Doug Coleman, the DEA’s special agent in charge for Arizona, in a recent interview with The Arizona Republic.
‘Heroin in pill form’
Federal agents and Tempe police detectives last summer seized 30,000 such pills during an enforcement operation against a drug trafficking organization tied to a Mexican cartel, The Republic reported previously.
Those potent fentanyl-laced pills, found during a traffic stop, were designed to resemble oxycodone pills — an increasingly common practice that has spurred an uptick in accidental overdoses across the country.
At a fraction of the cost of other opioids, black-market pills contributed to at least 32 overdose deaths in Maricopa County in less than two years, officials said last year. More recent figures aren’t yet available.
“An oxy is just heroin in pill form,” Coleman told The Republic. “That’s all it is.”
The Arizona Department of Health Services has tallied more than 5,800 possible opioid overdoses statewide since enhanced monitoring took effect in June, including over 900 deaths, the most recent data show.
Heroin, either by itself or in combination with other substances, was involved in about one-in-four verified opioid overdoses last year. That was followed by oxycodone, benzodiazepine and morphine.
Fentanyl accounted for less than 5 percent.
Seizure data is part of bigger story
It’s impossible to determine from numbers alone how much there has actually been an increase in illegal activity or whether the upticks mark shifts in ever-finite investigative resources, said Michael S. Scott, a clinical professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University.
More agents working potentially significant cases, or isolated but sizable confiscations, can sway statistics like these widely. Plus, supply can alter demand, which can have effects elsewhere in the illicit drug market.
“A general point can be made about the role that criminal drug enforcement can play in dealing with illegal drug problems is that it alone is unlikely to have a large effect on either supply or demand for a drug,” Scott told The Republic. “It can affect supply, demand and price at the margins — which can be important — but comprehensive strategies are needed.”
Those strategies should include raising awareness among high-risk populations, bolstering treatment as close to “on-demand” as possible and addressing pharmaceutical manufacturers and physicians, Scott said.
Focus should also be put on how drugs are shipped into the country, both through channels like the mail, or via “more-clandestine” routes like planes, boats or border crossing by land.
“The prospects for making drug enforcement more effective depend heavily on the integration of these other strategic elements with the enforcement element,” Scott said. “Again, enforcement and punishment alone is highly unlikely to be effective, most especially with highly addictive drugs.”
credit:azcentral.com
